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From the library of George J. Peirce
STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
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SOCIAL LIFE IN OLD NEW ENGLAND
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SOCIAL LIFE IN OLD NEW ENGLAND
MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD
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BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1915
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SOCIAL LIFE IN OLD NEW ENGLAND
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SOCIAL LIFE IN OLD NEW ENGLAND
MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD
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BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1915
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Copyright, 1914,
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Publiihed, October, 191*
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FOREWORD
Good Americans are becoming more deeply interested, with each year that passes, in the intimate every-day life of those who built up this country. Though we are less and less con- cerned all the time about the battles fought as a means to the establishment of our United States, we care increasingly for the human nature of the men who did the fighting and for the beauty of character and countenance which distinguished the wives and daughters of those men. After telling each other for a couple of centuries that the American home is the foundation of the Re- public, we are at last beginning to prove that we believe it by showing real interest in that home and in those who founded it. Thus the education that qualified for the home, the pro- fessions, and industries that maintained it, the religion that nourished it, the love that was its backbone, the hospitality exercised in it, the books that provided subjects for its con- versation, the journeys that heightened its allurements, the amusements that brightened its days of hard work — all these aspects of home and home-life are being recognized as of
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vi FOREWORD
vital importance, if we would truly understand the ideals behind American civilization.
But as our desire grows to know more and more about early manners and customs in this country, means of acquiring that knowledge are constantly diminishing. Only in very large and wealthy libraries can now be found files of Colonial newspapers — than which no source of information is more valuable. And only here and there, in the crowded life of our time, is to be met the man or the woman having the temperament, the sympathy, and the pa- tience necessary to research which will ex- tract material of real value from these and other sources. Three such, Mrs. Harriette M- Forbes of Worcester, Mrs. Charles Knowles Bolton of Brookline, and Mrs. James de Forest Shelton of Derby, Connecticut, have been most kind in placing at my disposal the results of much devout digging in their several fields of scholarship, and to them, as to Mr. Clifton Johnson, who procured for me several rare illustrations of old-time school-books, I am very glad here to acknowledge my deep in- debtedness.
To the inspiration of Alice Morse Earle's books on Old New England; to the invaluable files of the New England Magazine; to the Houghton Mifflin Company; to G. P. Put- nam's Sons; Charles Scribner's Sons; the W.
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FOREWORD vii
B. Clarke Company of Boston; and to the editors of McClure's Magazine, I likewise give my thanks for quotation privileges more specif- ically acknowledged in the text of the book. Librarians not a few have greatly helped me, also, notably those in charge of the several New England colleges, at the American Anti- quarian Society in Worcester, at the Boston Athenaeum, and at the Boston Public Library. If I have succeeded in making the social life of old New England a real thing to my readers, it is because of the generous cooperation which has thus been extended to me. One of the very nicest things about writing a book like this is the deepened belief which is gained in the in- nate kindliness and helpfulness of people every- where. If we of to-day are no longer neighbors in the old New England sense of the word, we are more than ever neighbors in the true sense; and no one knows this better than the author, who must constantly send letters to strangers and ask favors of everybody. It is my sincere hope that the scores of people upon whose time I have thus trespassed will feel that it has all been worth while, in that we have together been able to humanize for future generations New Englanders of a vanished day.
m. c. c. Boston, July, 1914.
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CONTENTS
Foreword v
I. In the Little Red Schoolhoose . 1
II. Going to College 46
III. Choosing a Profession .112
IV. " Tending Meetin' " 146
V. Getting Married 196
VI. Setting Up Housekeeping . . . 233
VII. Keeping a Diary 888
VIII. Having a Picture Taken .... 319
IX. Reading Books 350
X. The Occasional Journey . . S78 XI. Singing Schools and Kindred Country
Diversions 417
XII. Amusements of the Big Town 435
XIII. Funerals as Festivals .... 463
XIV. St. Pumpkin's Day and Other Honored
Holidays 478
XV. Christmas Under thb Ban 494
Index 507
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Hoke tbom the Visit Fnmtupiax
The Little Red Schoolhouse, Sandgatb, Bennington
Co., Vt 14
Picture Alphabet of Religious Jingles ... 15
A Schoolmaster or Long Ago 22
The Rogers Page 23
A Typical Horn - Book 23
Earliest Representation of Harvard College
Buildings Extant 60
South Middle Hall, the Oldest Yale Building Still
Standing. Built in 1752 61
Old Baptist Meeting House, Providence, R. I. .88 Dartmouth Toweb and Old Pine Stump ... 89 Samson Occom, the Indian Who Helped in the Found- ing op Dartmouth College 89
West College (Williams College), 1790 ... 102
President's House, Williams College .... 102
Governor Bowdoin 103
The Chapel, Misdlebubt College, MmDLBBURY, Vt. 103
Dr. James Lloyd 132
James Otis 133
An Old Bookbinder's Advertisement .... 140
Robert Bailbt Thomas 140
The Last of the Farm Boys and His Pair or Oxen 141
The Old Ship, Hinoham, Mass. Built in 1081 146 Announcement or the Installation or a New Obgan
at King's Church, Providence, in 1771 147
A Page or the Old Bay Psalm Book .... 156 The Obgan Upon Which Oliver Holden Harmonized
" Coronation " 157
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rii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .
St. Paul's Church, Wicxfqrd, R. 1 163
Meeting House at Rocky Hill, Amebbuby, Mah.,
Showing Box Pewb 163
Hester Prynnk of " The Scarlet Letter " 186
A Fine Old Mebttino House, Bennington, Vt. . 187
Synagogue Yeshuat Israel, Newport, R. I. 190 Interior op Trinity Church, Newport, R. I. Built
in 1725 191
The John Aldbn House, Duxburt, Mass. Built 1663 204 Thb Reverend Arthur Browne, or Portsmouth,
N. H 205
Governor John Endicott 216
Governor John Winthrop 216
A Wedding Party in Boston in 1756 .... 217
Ancient House at Plymouth 234
The Old Gambrel - Roofed House, Cambridge, Mass.
Birthplace op Oliver Wendell Holmes 235 Stone Mansion at Newbuhtport, Mass. Built in
1636 238
A Brave Display of Pewter 239
A Fireplace with a Real Chihnet Cobnib 258
Some Retired Spinning Wheels 259
Dressed to go Calling 276
A New England Village, Showing Elm St., Framing- ham, Mass 277
Kitchen of the Dorothy Q. House, Quinct, Mabs. . 286 Compass and Sun - Dial Owned by Roger Williams and Presumably Used by Him in Hib Journey
into Exile in 1635 287
A Fine Example op a Highhct 287
State Street, Boston, One Hundred Years Ago 306
Boston's Old South Meeting House, about 1800 307
Cotton Mather 320
Samuel Sbwall 321
The Copley Family, Showing the Artist in the
Background 326
General Hbnby Knox 327
Mrs. John Trumbull 332
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
Mm. R, C. DbbBT 333
A Rare Wax Portrait or Olives Holden, Composer
or " Coronation " 338
Rev. John Pibbpont, His Win and Daughter . . 339
Mas. Mkbct Warbhn 356
iron Adams 356
Washington Irving 357
A View or Pbovtdbncb, R. L, about 1824 ... 384
Williams Tavern in Marlborough, Mass. . 384 Interior or the Whipple House, Ipswich, Mass.,
FORMERLY A TavERN 385
" The Earl or Halifax " Inn, Portsmouth, N. H.,
Kept by John Stavbbs in 1761 .392
Tap Room, WATsma Inn, Sudbury, Mass. . . 393
The Wayside Inn 428
A Flock or Merino Sheep in a New England Pasture 429 Plaxinq - Card Invitation prom John Brown op Providence fob a Dance at His New House,
1788 438
A Sonata or Clbmenti 439
Pumpkin Time 472
Thanksgiving Preparations 473
Kino's Chapel, Boston, Hung with Christmas Gbebns and Showing the Coats of Asms of the Various
Rotal Governors ....... 604
Intbbiob of the Old M beting House at Bennington,
Vt. 505
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SOCIAL LIFE IN OLD NEW ENGLAND
CHAPTER I
IN THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE
NO tradition is cherished more lovingly by the mass of the American people than that of the " little red schoolhouse." From this humble institution, we have always felt, went forth influences which have been of inestimable value in building up a sturdy, self- respecting manhood and womanhood in this country. We have liked to read stories in the opening chapters of which John Smith, an awkward lad of twelve, is shown stealing ad- miring glances over the top of his geography at Sally Jones, a pink-cheeked, flaxen-haired maiden of ten, in whose behalf he often rises to quite heroic proportions — outside of school hours. Nor were they mere legends — all those tales about the purifying effect upon
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2 SOCIAL LIFE IN
John of his adoration of Sally. There was a basis of real fact in the contention that it was good for him and not bad for her to carry her books to and from school and gladly to offer her at recess the red-cheeked apple which a fond mother had designed for her " own boy's " luncheon.
Sometimes John and Sally married after their school days were over; sometimes their little romance died a natural death, when the stern realities of life came to claim their attention. But it is of them and their playmates, none the less, that we think with reminiscent tenderness when, during a drive or motor trip through the winding roads of old New England, we come suddenly, at a cross-roads corner, upon a sur- viving district schoolhouse. The building is probably white now, as a result of the " clean up and paint up " spirit which, through our village improvement societies, lias penetrated to even the remotest settlements. But in our mind's eye it easily takes on the ruddy glow of former days; and soon we see, behind the figures of John Smith and Sally Jones, John's grandmother and Sally's grandfather, quaint little people who here pored over the curious pages of the " New England Primer", shivered in winter before the reluctant fire made of green pine boughs, or in summer stitched the samplers of Colonial days and toiled painfully
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OLD NEW ENGLAND 3
with the primitive horn-book. Our historical sequence gets a little mixed in the flood of emotion awakened by the sight of the deserted schoolhouse. But we know that we are glad to have seen it and glad, too, to belong to people who, at the very outset of their career in the New World, provided as best they could " for the perpetuation of learning among us."
As might have been expected, Boston was the first town in New England to take public action in regard to setting up a school. In 1635 it was agreed in town meeting that " Our brother Philemon Parmont shall be entreated to become a scoolemaster for the teaching and nourtering of children with us." It was pro- vided that Master Parmont should receive as recompense for such " nourtering " thirty acres of land as well as donations. Soon a " garden plot " was voted to Mr. Daniel Maude as schoolmaster; and in the records of 1636 may be found a list of the subscriptions of all the principal inhabitants of the town who gave from four shillings up to ten pounds each towards Mr. Maude's maintenance.
Massachusetts established schools by law in 1642, ordering each town of fifty householders to " appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to read and write." The selectmen of every town were required to have a " vigilant eye over their
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4 SOCIAL LIFE IX
brethren and neighbors, and see that none of them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families, as not to endeavour to teach their children and apprentices so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue and obtain a knowledge of the laws." It was even provided that, if parents were neglectful of their duties in the matter of education, their children might be taken from them and given to the care of others not so " unnatural! "
The law of 1642 enjoined universal education but did not make it free; nor did it impose any penalty upon municipal corporations for neglecting to maintain a school. But the people responded so generally to the spirit of the law that Governor Winthrop was able to write:
" Divers free schools were erected as in Rox- bury (for maintenance whereof every inhabitant bound some house or land for a yearly allow- ance forever), and at Boston where they made an order to allow fifty pounds and a house, to the master, and thirty pounds to an usher who should, also, teach to read and write and cipher; and Indians' children were to be taught freely, and the charge to be by yearly contribu- tion, either by voluntary allowance, or by rate of such as refused, etc.; and this order was confirmed by the General Court. Other towns
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OLD NEW ENGLAND 5
did the like, providing maintenance by several means."
R. C. Waterston has interestingly established an intimate relationship between this first free school in Boston and Reverend John Cotton. In the Boston of Lincolnshire, England, from which Cotton had emigrated to New England, a free grammar school had been established by Queen Mary as early as 1554, the first year of her reign. In this school Latin and Greek were taught, and it was quite natural, therefore, that a lover of learning, like Cotton, should have immediately concerned himself, upon set- tling in the New World, with the inception here of an institution similar to the one with whose government he had been deeply concerned in old Boston. The fact that the master of the Lincolnshire school had " a house rent-free " is held to be reason that, besides the fifty pounds allowed to the Boston teacher In 1645, " a house for him to live in " was also provided.
In some of the towns of Massachusetts, schools, of course, had been established well in advance of the 1642 law which made them a necessity. Dorchester, Ipswich, and Salem had schools early in the history of the colony. New Haven and Hartford founded schools in 1638 and 1641 respectively, while Newport had a school in 1640. Woburn, Massachusetts, very early in its history had an interesting " dame
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6 SOCIAL LIFE IN
school " kept by Mrs. Walker, a widow who lived in the center of the town and taught Woburn youth to read and write in a room of her own home. How profitable pedagogy then was as a profession may be judged from the fact that, although the town in 1641 agreed to pay this woman ten shillings annually for her services as teacher, her net income, at the end of the first year, was only one shilling and three- pence by reason of the fact that seven shillings had already been deducted for her taxes, and various other amounts for " produce which she had received ! "
The Roxbury Latin School was a very early institution. It owed its establishment chiefly to the Apostle Eliot and dates from 1645 — only ten years later than the time when Phile- mon Parmont set up as a " scoolemaster " in neighboring Boston. It has been exceedingly prosperous almost from the beginning, by reason of the fact that Thomas Bell, who died in 1671, left a large quantity of Roxbury real estate for its continued maintenance and sup- port. It is a close rival in the picturesqueness of its history to the Boston Latin School.
The most interesting early schoolmaster of this venerable institution was Ezekiel Cheever, who was born in London in 1614 and first came to the Boston of New England when he was twenty-three years old. Not at that tender
OLD NEW ENGLAND 7
age did he enter upon his career as a Boston Latin School teacher, however. He was suc- cessively at New Haven, Ipswich, and Charles- town before, at the age of fifty-six, he received from the great men of Boston the keys of its most famous school. This was in 1670. He died in 1708, at the ripe age of ninety-four, and was thus described by Judge Sewall in his diary: "He labored in his calling, skilfully, diligently, constantly, religiously, seventy years, — a rare instance of piety, health, strength, serviceableness. The welfare of the Province was much upon his spirit. He abominated periwigs." Cheever was buried from the school- house where he had long held his sway and made his home. His " Accidence " continued to hold the place of honor for a century among Latin school-books. The only personal portrait we have of him was furnished by his pupil, the Reverend Samuel Maxwell, who once wrote: " He wore a long white beard, terminating in a point, and when he stroked his beard to the point it was a sign for the boys to stand clear." Phillips Brooks, however, who was always a loyal Latin School boy and who wrote the Me- morial Address on the occasion of the school's 250th anniversary (in 1885), insists that it was " the eternal terror and no mere earthly rage " which burned in Master Cheever's eye on these occasions when his hand followed his beard to
8 SOCIAL LIFE IN
its uttermost point. That he " wrestled 'with the Lord " often and long over the souls of his pupils is well known.
We are, however, proceeding too fast and too far. The days of Cheever's preeminence as a teacher were two generations later than the inception of the " divers free schools " in towns around Boston to which Winthrop had refer- ence. Dorchester was one of these towns, and the directions there given, in 1645, to the schoolmaster by the town fathers are delight- fully quaint. It was provided that in the wanner months the school day should be from seven in the morning until five in the afternoon, while during the colder and darker months the hours were from eight to four. There was, however, a midday intermission from eleven to one, except on Monday. Then we read:
" The master shall call his scholars together between twelve and one of the clock to examine them what they have learned, at which time also he shall take notice of any misdemeanor or outrage that any of his scholars shall have committed on the sabbath, to the end that at some convenient time due admonition and cor- rection may be administered.
" He shall diligently instruct both in humane and good literature, and likewise in point of good manners and dutiful behavior towards all, especially their superiors. Every day of the
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OLD NEW ENGLAND 9
week at two of the clock in the afternoon, he shall catechise his scholars in the principles of the Christian religion.
" He shall faithfully do his best to benefit his scholars, and not remain away from school unless necessary. He shall equally and im- partially teach such as are placed in his care, no matter whether their parents be poor or rich.
" It is to be a chief part of the schoolmaster's religious care to commend his scholars and his labors amongst them unto God by prayer morning and evening, taking care that his scholars do reverently attend during the same.
" The rod of correction is a rule of God neces- sary sometimes to be used upon children. The schoolmaster shall have full power to punish all or any of his scholars, no matter who they are. No parent or other person living in the place shall go about to hinder the master in this. But if any parent or others shall think there is just cause for complaint against the master for too much severity, they shall have liberty to tell him so in friendly and loving way."
To Dedharn, Massachusetts, should be ascribed the honor of having established the first public school in America in the sense in which we of to-day understand the term: a school, that is, established by the voters or
10
SOCIAL LIFE IN
freemen of the town and supported by general taxation. The settlement of Dedham — origi- nally called Contentment — was begun in 1635, and the first recorded birth in the town was on June 21 of that year. Ere this first-born of the new settlement was a year and a half old, a committee had been appointed (January 1, 1637) " to contrive the Fabricke of a meeting- house; " and in this meeting-house seven years later the first free public school was established by the following vote:
" The said Inhabitants, taking into Consider- ation the great necessitie of providing some means for the Education of the youth in our s'd Towne, did with an unanimous consent de- clare by voate their willingness to promote that worke, promising to put too their hands, to provide maintenance for a Free Schoole in our said Towne.
" And farther did resolve and consent, tes- tifying it by voate, to rayse the summe of Twenty pounds per annu towards the maintain- ing of a Schoole Mr to keep a free School in our s'd towne.
" And also did resolve and consent to betrust the s'd 20 pound pr annu & certain lands in our Towne formerly set apart for publique use, into the hand of Feoffees to be presently chosen by themselves, to imploy the s'd 20 pounds and the land afores'd to be improved for the use of
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OLD NEW ENGLAND 11
the said Schoole: that as the profits shall airise from ye s'd land, every man may be proportion- ally abated of his some of the s'd 30 pounds aforesaid, freely to be given to ye use aforesaid. Aridyt ye said Feofees shall have power to make a Rate for the necessary charg of improving the s'd land; they giving account thereof to the Towne, or to those whome they should depute.
" John Hunting, Eldr Etiazer Lusher, Francis Chickering, John Dwight & Michael Powell, are chosen Feofees and betrusted in the behalf of the Schoole as aforesaid."
Dedham was much too enterprising to oblige its students to put up longer than was actually necessary with the inconveniences of a building not built to be a school; and in January, 1648- 1649, it was voted at town meeting to erect what should serve both as a schoolhouse and watch-house. The dimensions used in this structure have been preserved in the town records. They show us that the schoolhouse part of the building was eighteen feet long — fourteen feet besides the chimney — and fif- teen feet wide; the watch-house consisted of a lean-to six feet wide and set at the back of the chimney. Thus we have only to imagine, as one writer has picturesquely put it, " the busy hum of the school work filling the east room by day and the faithful watching of the sentinel
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12 SOCIAL LIFE IN
from the windows of the western lean-to during the long and lonely nights, to understand how child and man in those old days performed their several parts in laying the foundation of a free school and a free state."
Dedham's school enterprise differed from that of many another New England town in that its educational expenditures were regularly pro- vided for, and the man entrusted with the train- ing of its youth adequately paid for his work. We find it written down as the vote of eighty- four " freemen," who assembled in 1651 to legislate on these matters, that the " settled mayntenance or wages of the schoolmr: shall be 20 pounds p ann at ye leaste." This at a time when men hired in some other Massachusetts towns were being given one pound " to tech the biger children." So wretchedly, indeed, were many of the early schoolmasters paid that they frequently served summonses, acted as court messengers, and even dug graves to eke out their slender incomes. One case is extant of a schoolmaster who took in washing!
Yet all the while, more schools and better schools were being cherished as an ideal. " Lord, for schools everywhere among us! " prayed the great and good John Eliot at a synod of the Boston churches in the early days of the settlement. " Oh, that our schools may flour- ish! That every member of this assembly may
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OLD NEW ENGLAND 13
go home and procure a good school to be en- couraged in the town where he lives. That before we die we may see a good school in every plantation in the country! " Ehot died in 1690. How slowly his prayer was answered may be seen in a town report of nearly thirty years later, which reflects an average community's attitude on school matters:
" December 7, 1719: Voted that we will hier a school master, if we can hier one in town for this winter till the last of' March insuing the Date here of, upon the following conditions, viz; Wrighters to pay four pence a week and Reeders three pence a week and the Rest to be paid by the town."
"November, 1724: Boys from six to twelve years of age shall pay the schoolmaster whether they go to school or not, four pence a week for Wrighters, and three pence a week for Reeders."
In this town a special committee was soon appointed to have educational matters in charge, and we read under date of November 2, 1787, that these citizens were empowered to hire a schoolmaster " as cheap as they can and as speedy as they can."
Not long after this the great question of general taxation for free public schools became an issue everywhere, and the step, though op- posed by many who had no children, finally prevailed. Often the district and not the town
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14 SOCIAL LIFE IN
was the unit of school management, however, and it was therefore only intermittently that education was dispensed in the rude little structure erected for the purpose. Thus, from the town meeting reports of one community, may be read:
" 1786: Voted not to have schooling this winter.
" 1787: Voted to raise the sum of £10 and divide it among the five school districts, each district to receive 40s.
" 1789: No money appropriated for schools on account of building the meeting house.
" 1790: The building erected on the hill for a pest house was removed into the town street for a school house."
The most cheerful things about these early school buildings was the color they were painted. Latterly, there has been an attempt to shatter one of our cherished New England traditions by asserting that this color was not red. But the weight of evidence is all on the other side; the " little red schoolhouse " remains. It was usually a small, one-room building — this schoolhouse — which was entered through a shed-like hallway in which wood was piled and where hats, coats, and dinner-pails were also stored. Sometimes wood was furnished by the parents, the child with a stingy father being then, by common consent, denied intimate re-
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OLD NEW ENGLAND 15
lations with the fire. After the time of fire- places a large square stove in the center of the room was the usual method of heating. From this a long pipe, suspended by chains, reached to the end of the building, where the chimney stood. Frequently this primitive heating-plant had to cope with the problem of raising the temperature from twelve below zero, when school opened, to a temperature favorable to " wrighting."
The first seats in these little red schoolhouses were planks set on legs. These were sometimes taken out at noontime, turned bottom upward, and used for sliding down hill on the snow crust. Later, there were benches with vertical backs set at right angles to the seats, torturing things for a child to sit on during the long sessions kept by some of these early schools, " nine hours a day in summer, six days a week."
New Haven held school from " 6 in ye morn- ing, to 11 a clock in ye forenoon, and from 1 a clock in the afternoon to 5 a clock in the after- noon in Summer and 4 in Winter." Salem, Massachusetts, received a gift of a bell from England, in 1723, which, we learn, rang for school at seven in the morning from March to November, and at eight from November to March. School here closed at four in winter and at five in summer. But when the school- house door once was shut, dull care was left
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16 SOCIAL LIFE IN
behind. There was no home study in those days. Not only did the pupils get their lessons and recite them in the schoolroom, but they also wrote their compositions there and — as soon as education had developed to that point — did a good deal of general reading besides. Thus the evenings were free for the sleigh-rides, candy parties, and skating which assured to our New England forebears clear eyes and rosy cheeks — instead of the spectacles and the stoop of youngsters to be seen everywhere in our time.
All this early zeal for public education, it must be remembered, however, was in behalf of boys. Girls were not admitted at all to the first tax-supported schools; and Northampton, Massachusetts, was no more remiss than many another town in that it had sustained boys' schools for more than a hundred years before there came to be even a question (in 1788) of educating girls, also.1 The town, even at this time, voted to be at no expense in this matter, though four years later girls between the ages of eight and fifteen were permitted to attend its schools from May to November.
1 " More than one hundred and fifty yeara elapsed from the open-
Xof the first public school in Massachusetts before one girl was itted; and not until 1828 — one hundred and ninety years after the establishment of the first school — were girls admitted with full equality to the entire privileges of a thorough public educa- tion." Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, February, 1873.
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Such education as girls received in the early days had all been in dame schools, though by the close of the seventeenth century some New England towns had made provision for " young females " in short summer terms or at the noon hours of the boys' school. Governor Winthrop, notwithstanding the fact that he had three wives who were all educated women, evidently felt very strongly that girls did not greatly need learning. In his diary for 1645 we find: " The Gov. of Hartford, Ct. came to Boston and brought his wife with him. A goodly young woman of special parts, who has fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her under- standing and reason which has been growing upon her divers years by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing and had written many books. Her husband being very tender and loving with her was loth to grieve her, but he saw his error when it was too late. For if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men whose minds are stronger she had kept her wits and might have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set her."
Notwithstanding the sad fate of this wife of a Connecticut governor, it was in Connecticut that there was established the first school ex-
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clusively for girls in branches not taught in the common schools. This dates from 1780 and was opened in Middletown by William Wood- bridge, a graduate of Yale College. Its classes were held in the evenings, and the branches taught were Grammar, Geography, and the Art of Composition. Not very disturbing subjects; yet popular sentiment was strongly against the movement. " Who," it was demanded, " will cook our food and mend our clothes if girls are to be taught philosophy and astronomy? " An explanation of the great difficulty that most American women of to-day experience in keeping their check-books straight may be found in the ridicule accorded New England women when they first undertook to study mental arithmetic. " If you expect to become widows and carry pork to market," they were told, " it may be well enough to study mental arithmetic. Other- wise keep to the womanly branches." In short, a girl who could read, sew, and recite the shorter catechism was held to have acquired all the education she needed. Up to 1828, indeed, girls were admitted to the public schools only from April to October, the months when the young males of the land were productively at work on the farms. This was exceedingly con- sistent; the chief object of education in New England frankly, from the very first, was to train up a learned ministry. And girls, of
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course, did not enter into this consideration. One Anne Hutchinson had been enough.
Hampton, New Hampshire, however, stands out from all other New England towns in that it made definite provision, in its very first vote on school matters, that girls, as well as boys, were to share in its educational privileges. This was in 1649, and the resolution reads: " The selectmen of Hampton have agreed with John Legat for the present yeare insueing, to teach and instruct all the children of or belong- ing to our Town, both mayle and femaile (wch are capable of learning) to write and read and cast accountes (if it be desired) as diligently and as carefully as he is able to instruct them. And allso to teach and instruct them once in a week, or more in some Orthodox catechism pro- vided for them by their parents or masters. And in consideration hereof we have agreed to pay the same John Legat, the som of Twenty pounds in Come, and cattle and butter." This was very enlightened legislation for that day; and Hampton may well be proud of it.
As soon as the elementary schools were well established in Massachusetts, that State pro- vided by law (1647) that " when any town in- creases to the number of one hundred families they shall set up a grammar school the master thereof being able to instruct youths as far as they may be fitted to the university." Massa-
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chusetts meant that this law should be observed, too. In 1665 we find the town of Concord being severely criticized by the General Court for having no Latin School! The masters of these grammar schools were almost always college graduates; from 1671 down to the Revolution twenty-two of the men who thus served Plym- outh were happy possessors of a Harvard degree.
Frequently the competition among select- men in search of a good teacher was very keen. Thus we learn from the Woburn records of 1710 that " the Selectmen met to consider how they might obtain a suitable person to keep grammar school, but found it very difficult to do so by reason that they heard that there was none to be had at the Colledge. Whereupon they appointed Ensign John Pierce to goe to Boston and try if Dr. Oaks, his son, or Mr. Kallender's son might be obtained for that end." In an entry for the next month we read:
" The Selectmen of Woburn being met to- gether Ensign John Pierce made the following return: that he had been at Boston to speak with Dr. Oaks, his son and Mr. Kallender's son, and found that they were already improved and so could not be obtained, and that he had made inquiry about some other suitable person to keep a grammar school in Woburn, but could not hear of any to be had. Soon after the
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Selectmen were informed that it was possible that Sir * Wigglesworth might be obtained to teach a grammar school for our towne. Where- upon the said Selectmen appointed Lieut. John Carter to go to Cambridge, and treat with him about that matter. Accordingly soon after Lieut. Carter made return to the Selectmen that he had been at Cambridge, and had dis- course with Sir Wigglesworth with reference to keeping a grammar school in Woburn, and that the said Sir Wigglesworth did give some encouragement in the matter, but could not give a full answer until the beginning of the following week, and then appointed him to come again for an answer. But when the said Lieut Carter came to Cambridge at the time appointed, he was informed that Sir Wiggles- worth was engaged or gone to Casco Bay Fort to keep a schoole there." The best that Wo- burn was able to do, after two journeys to Boston and two more to Cambridge, was to secure a man who agreed to teach their grammar school for twelve pounds and " board " until he could get a better job.
Not only was it hard to get a teacher, but it was exceedingly hard to get the wherewithal to pay him after he had been found. Woburn 's taxes were paid in shoes, those of Hingham in
1 Graduate students who had ft were called Sir by their colleges a
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pails. In this latter town the cost to parents, in 1G87, of schooling for their children was " four pence a week for such as learned Latin, such as learn English two pence a week, and such as learn to write and cypher, three pence a week." Nor could parents dodge the school- master tax by keeping their children at home. When some in Ipswich tried to do this, the selectmen were ordered to take a list of all children from six to twelve years of age and to charge their parents for their school tuition, whether the child went to school or not.
The Bible, the catechism, and the psalter were almost the only books used in these primi- tive schools, and the grouping was into a " first Psalter class," a " second Testament class," and so on. For a century there were no copying books and no slates, the ciphering and writing being done on paper after a pattern set by the master from his ciphering book, which was a written copy of a printed text-book. To the " Rule of Three " and the " Double Rule of Three " a great deal of attention was given. Beginners acquired knowledge of the alphabet from a " horn-book," the name given to a single piece of paper pasted on a slab of wood and covered with a transparent sheet of horn. The horn served to protect from the moist fingers of the child the Lord's Prayer, the letters of the alphabet, large and small, and the vowels
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with their consonant combinations. This " book " had a handle and was usually at- tached to the child's girdle.
The successor of the " horn-book " was the famous " New England Primer," than which no volume, save the Bible, did more to form New England character. The exact date of the first issue of this Primer is not known, but that it came out prior to 1691 we are sure from the fact that a second edition was advertised in a Boston almanac for that year. " There is now in the Press, and will suddenly be extant," we there read, " A Second Impression of the New England Primer enlarged, to which is added, more Directions for Spelling; the Prayer of K. Edward the 6th, and Verses made by Mr. Rogers the Martyr, left as a Legacy to his children. Sold by Benjamin Harris, at the London Coffee House in Boston."
Benjamin Harris is an interesting character. A printer by vocation, he was by avocation a militant Protestant. Hence he had become ■persona non grata in an England which in the eighties of the seventeenth century looked with distinct favor on Catholicism. New England naturally would be much more to his mind as a place of residence under these circumstances, and we accordingly find him setting up a book and coffee shop in Boston in the year 1686. Here he started Public Occurrences, the first
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newspaper printed in America, and brought out his famous primer.
Originally a " primer " was a volume of private devotions; but when the invention of printing made books cheaper, and those who came to pray desired to know how to read, also, it became the custom to include an alpha- bet in these little devotional works. Thus Harris was led by tradition, as well as by in- clination, to produce a primer which should be not only a text-book for the young but also a vade viecum for strenuous dissenters. No copy of this book issued previous to 1700 is known to be in existence to-day; and less than fifty copies have survived which were published during the next century, when the work was in the height of its popularity. Collectors there- fore naturally value very highly early copies of this work; for six copies of editions begin- ning with 1737 Cornelius Vanderbilt paid six hundred and thirty dollars not many years ago.
The first primers that we know had for their frontispiece a rudely engraved portrait of the reigning English monarch, but when war with England began, various American patriots suc- cessively occupied this place of honor, until it was finally accorded, as if by common consent, to George Washington. A page devoted to the alphabet stood at the beginning of the book. This was followed by several pages of " Easy
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Syllables for Children. ' ' Then were found pages grading up from words of one syllable to words of six, after which came the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles* Creed. But the most interesting thing about the book was the rhymed and illustrated alphabet, a series of twenty-four little pictures, each accompanied by a two or three-line jingle; a picture and a jingle for every letter of the alphabet — except J, which was treated as though I with another name, and V, which was regarded as identical with U.
The alphabet had been taught by means of rhymes long before the days of the " New Eng- land Primer"; but these rhymes, generally sup- posed to be the work of the aggressively Protes- tant Harris, were unique in character in that they gave to the children who read them en- during lessons in morals and the Bible. It is a pity that the name of the artist has not come down to us along with that of the rhymester; for it would be hard to find anywhere pictures more expressive in proportion to their size. The apples in the tree which illustrated the jingle, since become a classic:
" In Adam's Fall We sinned all,"
are " practicable " apples, so to say, and must often have tantalizingly made to water the
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young mouths agape at them. The tree which Zacchaeus climbed, the cock whose cry smote Peter's conscience, the ravens which fed Elijah, and the ark in which Noah went sailing out into the flood were similarly realistic. Many chil- dren come through our public schools to-day without obtaining such vivid impressions of classic Bible episodes as these rhymes and their pictures afford; I'd like to see their vogue re- vived.
But I would not wish to see again in circula- tion what was undoubtedly the " feature " of the primer in the mind of the militant Mr. Harris: that illustration depicting Mr. John Rogers burning at the stake, with his wife and ten children (ten, count them yourself) looking on. The nearest that Rogers' wife and ten children ever got to the stake and its cruelly curling flames was that they met the martyr " by the way as he went toward Smithfield." The cut in the " New England Primer " gives us history deeply colored by religious preju- dice.
Another notable feature of the book was the " Dialogue between Christ, Youth and the Devil." It begins with the declaration on the part of Youth that:
" Those days which God to me doth send In pleasure I'm resolved to spend."
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This sentiment pleases the Devil, who gleefully promises:
" If thou my counsel will embrace, And shun the ways of truth and grace, And learn to lie and curse and swear, And be as proud as any are; And with thy brothers will fall out, And sister with vile language flout; Yea, 6ght and scratch and also bite, Then in thee I will take delight."
Pedagogy would not be responsible, in our time, for these, violent and subversive sugges- tions. Nor would the words of Death, who soon appears to say:
" Youth, I am come to fetch thy breath And carry thee to th' shades of death. No pity on thee can I show, Thou hast thy God offended so. Thy soul and body I'll divide, Thy body in the grave I'll hide, And thy dear soul in hell must lie With devils to eternity,"
carry now the terror that they held for shudder- ing youth in an age when the tortures of the damned in hell were vividly set forth every Sunday at the meeting-house.
How perfectly the Church and the School worked together in those early days! The " backbone " of the primer was the ** West-
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minster Assembly's Shorter Catechism " — that religious office which Cotton Mather called a " little watering pot " to shed good lessons; and writing-masters were urged by the ministry to set sentences from this catechism to be copied by their pupils.1 Drill in the catechism was given in the schools no less regularly than drill in spelling; and such drill was regarded as a means second to none for developing those children whom Jonathan Edwards had pleas- antly called " young vipers and infinitely more hateful than vipers to God " into sober and religious men and women. The Puritan child was not allowed to forget at school, any less than at church and in the home, that to be an earnest and aggressive Christian was his chief duty in life. A primer published at Brook£eld as late as 1828 devoted nearly two pages to maxims which declared that " Death to a Chris- tian is putting off rags for robes " and appro- priately added the following cheerful stanza on
1 It waa made perfectly explicit by the General Court that the schoolmaster was to be made thus useful. In the records for May 3, 1654, we read:
" Forasmuch as it greatly concerns the welfare of this country that the youth thereof be educated, not only in good literature but sound doctrine, this Court doth, therefore, commend it to the serious consideration and special care of the officers of the college and the selectmen of several towns, not to admit or suffer any such to be continued in the office or place of teaching, educating, or in- structing of youth or children in the college or schools, that have manifested themselves unsound in the faith, or scandalous in their lives, and not giving due satisfaction according to the rules of Christ."
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The Uncertainty of Life
" In the burying place may see Graves shorter there than I; From Death's arrest no age is free.
Young children, too, may die. My God, may such an awful sight
Awakening be to me. O! that by early grace I might
For death prepared be."
A much more pleasing allusion to death is that first found in the 1737 edition of the " New England Primer " in a prayer which has become hallowed to every one of us by our childish as- sociations with it:
" Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take."
The author of this prayer is unknown, but his work — or is it her work? — having once been printed, was included in almost every subsequent edition of the " Primer " and has become a part of the spiritual heritage of every New England child. This same thing might have been said of the book as a whole in the days of our great-grandparents; a perfect de- scription of the " New England Primer " itself was for them contained in the apocryphal poem
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of the martyred John Rogers, " unto his chil- dren: "
" I leave you here a little book For you to look upon That you may see your father's face When I am dead and gone."
As we turn the crumbling pages and read the queer old verses of the " New England Primer ", we see in imagination the hulking forms of the boys who graduated from its teachings to be- come New England's fathers, and descry, too, the winsome faces of those gentle maidens who became their wives and helpmeets. All honor to this book!
In modern reminiscences about the " little red schoolhouse " the " jography " book plays a large part. But in Colonial days this branch of knowledge was regarded rather as " a diver- sion for a winter's evening " than as a necessary part of the school curriculum. Not until after the Revolution was the topic taken up in the elementary schools. Geography was first made a condition of entering Harvard in 1815, and 1825 is the earliest date that one finds it gener- ally named among the required studies in the public schools. The first American school geography was published in 1784. Its author was Reverend Jedediah Morse, father of the inventor of the electric telegraph, who is de-
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scribed on the title-pages of most editions of his books as " D.D. . . . Minister of the Congrega- tion in Charlestown, Massachusetts." From one of these books, " Geography Made Easy ", we get some authentic information about schools in Boston in 1800. There were seven of them, we learn, " supported wholly at the public ex- pense, and in them the children of every class of citizens freely associate." Three of these schools were " English grammar schools " in which " the children of both sexes from 7 to 14 years of age are instructed in spelling, ac- centing and reading the English language with propriety; also in English grammar and com- position, together with the rudiments of geog- raphy." In three other schools " the same children are taught writing and arithmetic. The schools are attended alternately, and each of them is furnished with an Usher or assis- tant. The masters of these schools have each a salary of 666 2-3 dollars per annum pay- able quarterly." Mention is also made thus authentically of the " Latin grammar school to which none are admitted till ten years of age."
The large and prosperous town of Boston, it will thus be seen, had progressed considerably in an educational way since the days of Phile- mon Parmont. But in the country districts of New England, the schools were scarcely less
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primitive at the end of the eighteenth century than they had been at the beginning of the seventeenth. The school committee of Woburn, to be sure, had by this time so far advanced beyond the limitations of the " New England Primer " as to be recommending for use Perry's " Spelling Book and Grammar ", Webster's "Institutes", "The Children's Friend", "La- dies' Accidence ", Morse's " Geography ", Chee- ver's " Accidence ", or " The Philadelphia Latin Grammar", Corderius' "Colloquies", Aesop's "Fables", Eutropius, Castalio's "Latin Testa- ment", Virgil, Tully, the Greek Grammar and Testament, and " Jenkin's Art of writing, with due attention to Paper, Pens and Ink." But this degree of development was rather unusual and may be credited to the town's proximity to Boston. In small seaport places thick, rough slates and large, heavy pencils were then just coming into use, and even these were still un- known in the hill-districts.
For that Connecticut town which Jane De Forest Shelton has made the background of her fascinating book, " Salt-Box House ", Dilworth's " Spelling-book ", printed in Glasgow, still served as the foundation-stone of instruction; and
1 Samuel Applet.on, well remembered in Boston as a merchant and philanthropist, taught school, in 178(5, for his board, lodging, washing, and sixty-seven cents per week, Mrs. Eurle, in giving this data, comments that such pay was then deemed " liberal and ample."
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until Noah Webster published his book of " Se- lections " in 1789, the Bible was the only read- ing-book— save the "New England Primer." " But few of the children owned books, black- boards had not been thought of, and the teacher went from one to another and ' set sums ' for them to puzzle over — to ' find the decimal of 17s, 9d. 2 far.! * There were recitations in con- cert of the multiplication table, and those of weights and measures — including 12 sacks make one load and 10 cowhides make one dicker. " Exercises in rhyme were also given such as:
' A gentleman a chaise did buy, A horse and harness too; They cost the sum of three score pounds, Upon my word 'tis true. The harness came to half the horse, The horse twice of the chaise, And if you find the price of them, Take them and go your ways.' "
The country school-teacher needed to be something of a craftsman as well as a scholar, for he was constantly being called upon to make with his penknife pens from the conve- nient goose-quill. " ' Please mend my pen * was a request he heard continually, as his charges stood at the long desk nailed to the side of the wall, toiling from pothooks to the elaborate capitals in which they delighted. Ink was made
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from ink-powders or sticks dissolved in vinegar, or more primitively from soot and vinegar. The ink-bottles were of leather, and the writing- books of large sheets of paper stitched to- gether." '
In the summer term of this hill-town Con- necticut school a woman was occasionally em- ployed as teacher, and then small boys as well as the girls were taught to make patchwork, to knit, and to work samplers. Never am I so glad that I was born in the late nineteenth, in- stead of the early eighteenth century, as when I contemplate this Colonial accomplishment! For not to be able to show a carefully designed and skilfully wrought sampler would have been an unspeakable disgrace in a schoolgirl of that period. By this means the young daughter of the house was taught to embroider the letters needed to mark her household linen, and from such humble beginnings was led gently on until she could reproduce gorgeous flowers, odd- shaped buildings, and complicated pastoral scenes in which perched birds as large as ele- phants and roses larger than either.
To the research worker there is great value in many of these samplers, for the reason that they were usually inscribed with the name and date of the maker, as well as, sometimes, with the place of her birth. Often, too, there was a ' " The Salt-Box House" : Baker & Taylor.
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prim little message that marvelously re-creates for us the personality of this long-ago child. Thus:
" Lora Standish is my Name Lord, guide my heart that I may do thy Will Also fill my hands with such convenient skill As will conduce to Virtue void of Shame, And I will give the Glory to Thy Name."
Knitting was another housewifely branch commonly taught in the schools. Initials were often knit into mittens and stockings, and one young miss of Shelburne, New Hampshire, could and did knit the alphabet and a verse of poetry into a single pair of mittens! We find the head of a dame school at Newport adver- tising that she will teach " Sewing, Marking, Queen Stitch and Knitting", while a Boston shopkeeper offers to take children and young ladies to board, holding out as an inducement that he will teach them " Dresden and Em- broidery on gauze, Tent Stitch and all sorts of Coloured Work." Mr. Brownell, the Boston schoolmaster in 1716, taught " Young Gentle Women and Children all sorts of Fine Works as Feather Works, Filagree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new Way, Turkey-work for Handkerchiefs two new ways, fine new Fashion purses, flourishing and plain Work."
In the larger towns, school kept open almost
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if
continuously, and because of this, precocious lads were often ready for college at what seems to us an absurdly early age. Frequently a youngster entered the Boston Latin School at six and a half years — and sometimes he could already read Greek a little, having been taught this tongue by a doting parent. John Trum- bull, who attended one of the best schools of the period, — in the little town of Lebanon, Connecticut, — made such good progress under that excellent schoolmaster, Nathan Tisdale, that he was ready to be admitted to college at the age of twelve. Trumbull's biography gives us some particularly interesting glimpses of education in Connecticut during the score of years preceding the Revolution.
For a picture of life in a Connecticut school at the beginning of the last century, one can- not do better than turn to the autobiography of Samuel G. Goodrich, or " Peter Parley " as he called himself on the title-pages of his numer- ous books. Goodrich was born in 1793 in the little farming town of Ridgefield, Connecticut, and he attended there a district school whose immediate surroundings were:
" — bleak and desolate. Loose, squat stone walls, with innumerable breaches, inclosed the adjacent fields. A few tufts of elder, with here and there a patch of briers and pokeweed, flour- ished in the gravelly soil. Not a tree, however,
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remained, save an aged chestnut. This cer- tainly had not been spared for shade or orna- ment, but probably because it would have cost too much labor to cut it down; for it was of ample girth.
" The schoolhouse chimney was of stone, and the fireplace was six feet wide and four deep. The flue was so ample and so perpendicu- lar that the rain, sleet and snow fell directly to the hearth. In winter the battle for life with green sizzling fuel, which was brought in lengths and cut up by the scholars, was a stern one. Not unfrequently the wood, gushing with sap as it was, chanced to let the fire go out, and as there was no living without fire, the school was dismissed, whereat all the scholars rejoiced.
" I was about six years old when I first went to school. My teacher was ' Aunt Delight,' a maiden lady of fifty, short and bent, of sallow complexion and solemn aspect. We were all seated upon benches made of slabs — - boards having the exterior or rounded part of the log on one side. . . . The children were called up one by one by Aunt Delight, who sat on a low chair and required each, as a preliminary, ' to make his manners,' which consisted of a small sudden nod. She then placed the spelling-book before the pupil, and with a penknife pointed, one by one, to the letters of the Alphabet, say- ing * What's that? '
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" I believe I achieved the alphabet that summer. Two years later I went to the winter school at the same place kept by Lewis Olm- stead — a man who made a business of plough- ing, mowing, carting manure, etc., in the sum- mer, and of teaching school in winter. He was a celebrity in ciphering, and Squire Seymour de- clared he was the greatest ' arithmeticker ' in Fairfield County. There was not a grammar, a geography or a history of any kind in the school. Reading, writing and arithmetic were the only things taught, and these very indiffer- ently — not wholly from the stupidity of the teacher, but because he had forty scholars, and the custom of the age required no more than he performed."
While we are on the subject of the pupils and schoolmasters in Connecticut, let us renew our acquaintance with Ichabod Crane, that Con- necticut schoolmaster who " tarried ", as he ex- pressed it, — or as Irving expressed it for him, — in Sleepy Hollow for the purpose of in- structing the children of the vicinity.
" His school-house was a low building of one large room, rudely constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed and partly patched with leaves of copy-books. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours, by a withe twisted in the handle of the door and stakes set against the window-shutters; so that though a thief
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might get in with perfect ease he would find some embarrassment in getting out . . . The school-house stood just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook running close by, and a formidable birch-tree growing at one end of it. From hence the low murmur of his pupils' voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard of a drowsy summer's day, like the hum of a bee-hive; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or command; or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say he was a conscien- tious man, that ever bore in mind the golden maxim * spare the rod and spoil the child.' Ichabod Crane's children certainly were not spoiled.
" The revenue arising from his school was small and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers whose children he in- structed. With these he lived successively a week at a time, thus going the rounds of the neighborhood with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief. That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of the rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs
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of schooling a grievous burden, and school- masters as mere drones, he had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms; helped to make hay; mended the fences; took the horses to water; drove the cows from pasture; and cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire the school, and became wonderfully gentle and ingratia- ting. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers by petting the children, particularly the young- est; and like the lion bold which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child on his knee and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together.
" In addition to his other vocations he was the singing-master of the neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays, to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers, where in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm from the parson. . . . Thus by divers little makeshifts . . . the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably well enough, and was thought by all who under- stood nothing of the labor of head-work, to have a wonderful easy life of it."
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Ichabod Crane had apparently chosen teach- ing for his life work, but in most villages where the schoolmaster " boarded round " the in- structors were young students helping them- selves through college and scrupulously saving their seventeen to twenty-five dollars a month toward the fees they must soon pay. Often they suffered much as they " boarded." The following amusing paragraphs from what pur- ports to be a schoolmaster's diary written early in the last century give a fairly faithful picture of one week's
BOARDING ROUND IN VERMONT
" Monday. Went to board at Mr. B's; had a baked gander for dinner; suppose from its size, the thickness of the skin and other vener- able appearances it must have been one of the first settlers of Vermont; made a slight im- pression on the patriarch's breast. Supper — cold gander and potatoes. Family consists of the man, good wife, daughter Peggy, four boys, Pompey the dog, and a brace of cats. Fire built in the square room about nine o'clock, and a pile of wood lay by the fireplace; saw Peggy scratch her fingers, and couldn't take the hint; felt squeamish about the stomach, and talked of going to bed; Peggy looked sullen, and put out the fire in the square room; went
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to bed and dreamed of having eaten a quantity of stone wall.
" Tuesday. Cold gander for breakfast, swamp tea and nut cake — the latter some consolation. Dinner — the legs, etc., of the gander, done up warm — one nearly despatched. Supper — the other leg, etc., cold; went to bed as Peggy was carrying in the fire to the square room; dreamed I was a mud turtle, and got on my back and couldn't get over again.
" Wednesday. Cold gander for breakfast; complained of sickness and could eat nothing. Dinner — the wings, etc., of the gander warmed up; did my best to destroy them for fear they should be left for supper; did not succeed; dreaded supper all the afternoon. Supper — hot Johnny cake; felt greatly relieved; thought I had got clear of the gander and went to bed for a good night's rest; disappointed; very cool night and couldn't keep warm; got up and stopped the broken window with my coat and vest; no use; froze the tip of my nose and one ear before morning.
"Thursday. Cold gander again; much dis- couraged to see the gander not half gone; went visiting for dinner and supper; slept abroad and had pleasant dreams.
" Friday. Breakfast abroad. Dinner at Mr. B*s; cold gander and potatoes — the latter very good; ate them, and went to school quite
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contented. Supper — cold gander and no po- tatoes; bread heavy and dry; had the head- ache and couldn't eat. Peggy much concerned, had a fire built in the square room and thought she and I had better sit there out of the noise; went to bed early; Peggy thought too much sleep bad for the headache.
" Saturday. Cold gander and hot Johnny cake; did very well. Dinner — cold gander again; didn't keep school this afternoon; got weighed and found I had lost six pounds the last week; grew alarmed; had a talk with Mr. B. and concluded I had boarded out his share."
Most of New England's great men " boarded round " as they made their way through college, and it is probably not too much to say that the experience was of great service to them, in that it helped them to develop breadth of sympathy, rugged health and — sometimes — a sense of humor. Their usual accommodation was a tireless bedroom, and, after the bracing walk to school, they were confronted with the problem of coaxing a cheerful fire out of wood which had no intention of burning. Often the morn- ing would be half gone before the room was sufficiently warm to admit of book-work of any kind; and during all this trying, thawing-out period, some kind of order had to be maintained among a group of young savages whose chief
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object in life it was to make their teacher's task a burden. Small wonder that the rod, the dunce-cap, and other means of discipline even more abhorrent were constantly in use. What such discipline could be in the case of a particu- larly brutal master we may imagine from the fact that in Sunderland, Massachusetts, a whipping-post was set firmly into the floor of a school erected in 1793, and offenders were com- monly tied there and whipped in the presence of their mates. Clifton Johnson, in his illumi- nating work on " Old-time Schools and School- books", adds that the walls of this particular schoolroom became badly marred, as time went on, with dents made by ferules hurled by the teacher at the heads of misbehaving pupils.
Even in the private schools of Western Mas- sachusetts there appears to have been no sug- gestion of the primrose path about the road to learning. Deerfield Academy, which began its career in 1799, had a code of by-laws containing no less than thirty-six articles for the disciplin- ing of its pupils! Morning prayers were held at five o'clock or as soon as it was light enough to read, and there was a fine of four cents for being absent from them and of two cents for being late. For making an ink-blot or dropping tallow on a library book, sis cents had to be paid to the school. Any encounter of the boy and girl students on the grounds or within the
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walls of the Academy, except at meals or prayers, cost one dollar; absence from meeting on Sun- day, Fast Day, or Thanksgiving cost another dollar, and there were similarly prohibitive fines for visiting Saturday night or Sunday and for playing cards, backgammon, or checkers within the walls of the building.
The very fact, however, that learning in these old days was so difficult, so painful, and so ex- pensive naturally made it the more highly prized. Those who had passed through the little red schoolhouse, the grammar school, and the Academy felt, quite properly, that, on the principle of the survival of the fittest, they were deserving of a good deal of credit. Seldom could it be said of them that they wore " their weight
" of learning, lightly, like a flower."
Happily, the college life served to restore such lads to the plane of mere human beings. Even Cotton Mather, as we shall see, was not quite so unconscionable a prig when he came out of Harvard as when he went in.
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CHAPTER H
GOING TO COLLEGE
THE spirit that founded the common schools of New England and, by 1649, made education compulsory throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut, established a university in Cambridge in 1636, when the colony of Massachusetts was scarcely seven years old, and in the year 1700 took the first steps towards founding Yale College in Connecticut. Brown in Rhode Island was begun in 1765, and five years later Dartmouth began its career amid the wilds of New Hampshire with a humble log house for its first college hall and Indians enrolled among its first students. Williams College was incorporated in the year 1785; Bowdoin came into existence in 1794; and in 1800 the college at Middlebury, Vt.,1 was born. Thus, by the dawn of the nineteenth century, at least one institution of collegiate rank was provided for each New England State. How these early colleges differed each from the
i 1791, has also had
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other, and the life led by their several students is matter well worth our attention.
In the initial volume of the Massachusetts Records we find, concerning New England's first college:
" At a Court holden Sept. 8, 1636 and con- tinued by adjournment to the 28th of the 8th month, October, 1636, the Court agreed to give £400 towards a school or college: £200 to be paid next year and £200 when the work is finished, and the next Court to appoint where and what building."
This is said to have been the first occasion in history when a community, through its representatives, voted a sum of money to es- tablish an institution of learning. Twelve of the principal magistrates and ministers of the colony, among them Governor Winthrop and Deputy-Governor Dudley, were apppointed at this same time to carry through the project. But except that they selected Newtowne, " a place very pleasant and accommodate ", to be the site of the college, these good men did little during the next two years to assure suc- cess to their undertaking. It was the bequest of the Reverend John Harvard, a graduate, as were many of the other leading men of the colony, of the old English university at Cam- bridge, which put the struggling institution on its feet.
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Of this gentle and generous scholar, who died of consumption the year after he had set- tled on our bleak New England shores, very little, except his college history, is actually known even to-day, when a fine old house with which his early life is said to be associated1 shares, with Shakespeare's birthplace and the home of Marie Corelli, the devout attention of American pilgrims to Stratford-on-Avon. That he was admitted a townsman in Charles- town, August 6, 1637; that he, with Anna, his wife, was received into the communion of the church over which Reverend Mr. Symmes presided and to which he had been appointed temporary assistant; that he served on a few town committees, and that he died in Charles- town, September 14, 1638, leaving half his es- tate and his whole library to the new college — this is the sum of John Harvard's biography. Where he was buried no man knows with cer- tainty, though it is believed he found his last resting-place at the foot of the Town Hill in Charlestown; the spot on which the alumni of the college erected a monument to him Sep- tember 26, 1828, was arbitrarily chosen be- cause it then commanded a view of the site of the college.
Books often endure for many centuries, and
a The Harvard Graduate*'
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out of John Harvard's library of three hundred and twenty volumes there should have been many a tome which would have tangibly con- nected this young graduate of Emmanuel Col- lege with the college in the newer Cambridge, which in March, 1639, voted to adopt his name — having already given its own to the town in which it had settled. Yet because of a de- structive fire in 1764, only one book of Harvard's goodly collection survives to-day. This is Downame's " Christian Warfare Against the Devil, World, and Flesh." Harvard's money, however, seven hundred and seventy-nine pounds, seventeen shillings and twopence, was of enormous importance in building up the struggling institution, not only because eight hundred pounds represented as much as thirty thousand dollars would now, but also because this unexpected and munificent bequest stimu- lated the colonists generally into giving what they could. Very touching is it to read of simple folk who gave a flock of sheep, cotton cloth worth nine shillings, a pewter flagon worth ten shillings, a fruit dish, a sugar spoon, one " great salt " and one small " trencher-salt " towards the upbuilding of this institution to " advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity.**
In the instrument first chosen to accomplish this high end, the Reverend Nathaniel Eaton, Harvard's first executive, the General Court
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was very unfortunate, Eaton and his wife turn- ing out to be rogues and cheats of the com- monest garden variety. Happily, the people at large were not discouraged by the fact that a mistake had been made. They continued to bestow generous gifts ou the institution, and in 1640 the General Court granted to the college the revenue of the ferry between Charlestown and Boston, which came to about sixty pounds a year. And then, in August, 1640, the Reverend Henry Dunster, who had recently arrived from England, was elected president under that title. From Dunster, its first president, Harvard took the tone which has made it famous. Wen- dell Phillips, in his Phi Beta Kappa address of 1881, pointed out that "the generation that knew Vane gave to our Alma Mater for a seal the simple pledge, Veritas." Dunster was of the generation that knew Vane. And he sacri- ficed his all for Truth as he saw it.
Very appealing is the story of this simple, straightforward man, who, after giving fourteen years of unselfish and devoted service to the college, sent himself into exile because over- taken with doubts as to the validity of infant baptism. Dunster had come from Lancashire, at the age of thirty-six, to escape persecution for non-conformity. For some time he seemed happy in the New World and devoted all the strength that was in him to the upbuilding of
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the college under his charge, giving it, out of his very limited resources, one hundred acres of land and contributing largely towards build- ing " a house for the president." He also secured a number of appropriations and im- provements from the General Court; and this in spite of the fact that his salary diminished steadily from sixty pounds a year to half that sum. He even expressed himself as willing, noble soul that he was, " to descend to the low- est step, if there can be nothing comfortably al- lowed." All this self-sacrificing service counted for nothing, however, when he " fell into the briers of Antipsedobaptism ", as Cotton Mather termed it. The General Court then gave only a cold ear to the " Considerations " which he submitted to them in October, 1634, in the hope that he might be permitted to re- main a little longer in " the president's house ", which he had helped to build. I am never quite so certain that the Puritans were a hard-hearted lot as when I recall the meagreness of their re- sponse to these pathetic pleadings:
" 1. The time of the year is unseasonable, being now very near the shortest day and the depth of winter.
" 2. The place unto which I go is unknown to me and my family, and the ways and means of subsistence to one of my talents and parts, or for the containing or conserving of my goods,
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or disposing of my cattle, accustomed to my place of residence.
" 8. The place from which I go hath fire, fuel and all provisions for man and beast laid in for the winter. To remove some things will be to destroy them; to remove others, as books and household goods, to damage them greatly. The house I have builded, upon very damageful conditions to myself, out of love for the college, taking country pay in lieu of bills of exchange on England, or the house would not have been built. . . .
" 4. The persons, all besides myself, are women and children, on whom little help, now their minds lie under the actual stroke of afflic- tion and grief. My wife is sick and my young- est child extremely so and hath been for months, so that we dare not carry him out of doors, yet much worse now than before."
None the less, March, which is only slightly more advantageous as a moving-time than November, was the limit of the time the Court would allow him to stay in the house he had builded, and in that month of sharp winds and icy chill the deposed president went to take charge of a church in Scituate. Four years later he died in poverty.
It was under Dunster that Harvard, in 1642, graduated its first class, consisting of nine members, most of whom became ministers.
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The ministry was, for many years, indeed, the profession to which the college chiefly dedicated its graduates. In these early days of the in- stitution, there were no lay-instructors to turn the students' attention to any other profession, the president, who was always a minister, being assisted only by two or three graduate students (who were called Sir) in doing the necessary teaching. For though the entrance require- ments sound very formidable in the matter of Latin and Greek, the college course was in many ways very elementary, and the students were all mere lads — almost children.
When Paul Dudley was ready to enter Har- vard, at the age of eleven (in 1686), his father addressed the following quaint note of intro- duction to the president:
" I have humbly to offer you a little, sober, and well-disposed son, who, tho' very young, if he may have the favour of admittance, I hope his learning may be tollerable: and for him I will promise that by your care and my care, his own Industry and the blessing of God, this mother the University shall not be ashamed to allow him the place of a son — Appoint a time when he may be examined."
The president who examined little Paul Dud- ley was Increase Mather, father of Cotton Mather, under whose administration much that is of interest to Harvard and to social life in old
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New England transpired. Chauncey, Hoar, and Oakes were successively presidents of Harvard between Dunster's departure and the accession of Mather.
Samuel Sewall entered college during the in- cumbency of Chauncey. It has always seemed to me a very great pity that Sewall, who afterwards wrote so much and so vividly, passed with exceeding lightness over his col- lege days. " I was admitted," he records, " by the very learned and pious Mr. Charles Chaun- cey, who gave me my first degree in the year 1671. There were no Masters in that year. These Bachelours were the last Mr. Chauncey gave a degree to, for he died the February fol- lowing. . . In 1674 I took my 2d Degree and Mrs. Hannah Hull was invited by the Dr. Hoar and his Lady to be with them a while at Cambridge. She saw me when I took my De- gree and set her affection on me, though I knew nothing of it till after our Marriage; which was February 28th, 1675-6."
Since Sewall was nearly seventy when he set down these meagre facts in a letter to his son, it is not to be wondered at that the events of his college days had grown dim in his mem- ory. Yet his contemporary account of events while a Resident Fellow, are scarcely more illuminating. We would gladly have taken it for granted that he had his hair cut if only he
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had described for us the way in which the boys under his charge lived and played and studied! The embryo Justice had a keen eye even thus early, however, for the administering of punish- ments. He dwells with unction on the disci- plining of Thomas Sargeant who, " convicted of speaking blasphemous words concerning the H. G." was condemned
" 1. To be publickly whipped before all the Scholars.
" 2. That he should be suspended as to taking his degree of Bachelour.
" 3. Sit alone by himself in the Hall un- covered at meals, during the pleasure of the President and Fellows, and be in all things obedient, doing what exercise was appointed him by the President, or else be finally expelled the Colledge.
" The first was presently put in Execution in the Library before the Scholars. He kneeled down and the instrument, Goodman Hely, at- tended the President's word as to the per- formance of his part in the work. Prayer was had before and after by the President, July 1, 1674."
The most vivid picture that I have been able to find of the college at this period is un- fortunately a prejudiced one. Visiting Jesuits could scarcely be expected to see through rose- colored glasses a college whose main purpose
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they knew to be the training of Puritans lor the priesthood. So these " impressions " of Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter must be taken with several grains of salt. The time of their visit was June, 1680, and on entering the College building they discovered " eight or ten young fellows sitting about smoking tobacco, with the smoke of which the room was so full that you could hardly see; and the whole house smelt so strong of it that when I was going up- stairs I said, this is certainly a tavern. . . . They could hardly speak a word of Latin so that my comrade could not converse with them. They took us to the library where there was nothing particular. We looked over it a little."
Inasmuch as there had long been a stringent rule against the use of tobacco by undergrad- uates, " unless permitted by the president, with the consent of their parents or guardians, and on good reason first given by a physician, and then in a sober and private manner ", these visitors must have mistaken a group of Fellows for students of the college. Fellows could and did both smoke and drink. Samuel Sewall very frankly writes down in his diary that on April 15, 1674, he spent fourpence for beer, threepence for wine and threepence more for " Tobacco Pipes."
In 1685 the Reverend Increase Mather be- came president of the college, taking the place
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with the distinct understanding that he should not be expected to reside at Cambridge and would be permitted to continue his work as pastor of the Second Church in Boston. Mather never particularly enjoyed his duties at Har- vard, and there was constant bickering during his tenure of office because he could not very well expound the Old and New Testaments to the students twice daily while living in Boston. In 1698, when the liberal salary for those times of two hundred pounds annually was voted to him as president, a committee of which Samuel Sewall was a member informed him in no mis- takable manner that he must now either move to Cambridge or resign; but he still refused to do either. Not until his salary had been pushed up another twenty pounds did he take up his residence across the river. And, in a few months, he was back again in Boston, telling Governor Stoughton that he did not care to waste him- self in preaching to " forty or fifty children, few of them capable of edification by such ex- ercises " and alleging, also, that living in Cam- bridge did not suit his health.
The fact was that Boston, with its political activities and theological controversies, was dearer to Mather than the education of youth could ever be, and when he found that he must either reside or resign, he reluctantly took the latter course. Mr. Samuel Willard, who prom-
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ised to stay at the college two days and nights a week, was, on September 6, 1701, appointed in his stead by the General Court Council, of which Sewall was a member.
Sewall was held accountable for this vote by the Mathers and was made to suffer se- verely for his sin, Cotton Mather telling him in public that he had treated his father " worse than a neger." When Cotton Mather himself wanted the appointment, after the death of Willard in 1707, Sewall, as will be readily un- derstood, was not at all inclined to work for him. Instead he used his influence that John Leverett should get the place.
Leverett had been the right-hand man of Governor Joseph Dudley, and it was a very happy moment for Dudley, as well as for Sewall, when his friend was inaugurated. " The gov'r ", Sewall writes, " prepared a Latin speech for instalment of the president. Then took the president by the hand and led him down into the hall. . . . The gov'r sat with his back against a noble 6re. . . . Then the gov'r read his speech and moved the books in token of their delivery. Then president made a short Latin speech, importing the difficulties dis- couraging and yet he did accept: Clos'd with the hymn to the Trinity. Had a very good dinner upon 8 or 4 tables. . . . Got home very well. Laud Deo."
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John Leverett was a layman and a man of liberal views. Under his administration, Har- vard evolved from a training school for parsons to a college where a liberal education could be obtained. The number of tutors was increased to accommodate the growing body of under- graduates and in 1720 " a fair and goodly house of brick," Massachusetts Hall, the earliest of the present college buildings, was erected. It was during Leverett's administration that the first catalogue of books in the library was printed; the list shows thirty-five hundred volumes, a very large proportion of which were theological works. Bacon, Chaucer, Shakes- peare, and Milton are in this catalogue; but not Dryden, Addison, Pope, Swift, and a num- ber of other writers now regarded as classics, whom we might expect to find there.
Upon the death of Leverett in 1724, the Reverend Benjamin Wadsworth came to be president. He served for thirteen years, a period to be noted chiefly for the reaction that then took place from the over-strict Puritanism of earlier times. This reaction went so far, indeed, that the college attempted to stem it by making the following rules:
" All the scholars shall, at sunset in the eve- ning preceding the Lord's Day, retire to their chambers and not unnecessarily leave them; and all disorders on said evening shall be
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punished as violations of the Sabbath are. . . . And whosoever shall profane said day — the Sabbath — by unnecessary business or visit- ing, walking on the Common or in the streets or fields in the town of Cambridge, or by any sort of diversion before sunset, or that in the evening of the Lord's Day shall behave himself disorderly, or any way unbecoming the season, shall be fined not exceeding ten shillings.
" That the scholars may furnish themselves with useful learning, they shall keep in their respective chambers and diligently follow their studies; except half an hour at breakfast; at dinner from twelve to two; and after evening prayers till nine of the clock. To that end the Tutors shall frequently visit their chambers after nine o'clock in the evening and at other studying times, to quicken them to their busi- ness."
These rules would seem to ensure the strictest propriety of behavior on the part of the stu- dents, but from George Whitefield's declara- tion that the young men at Harvard were as dissipated as those at Oxford, we must conclude that they did not so work out. During the presidency of Reverend Edward Holyoke of Marblehead, who was elected in 1737 to suc- ceed Wadsworth, and who served the college for more than thirty years, two members of the government had to be dismissed for in-
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temperance and, to cope with the constantly growing laxity of conduct, an elaborate system of fines was inaugurated. A few of these col- lege laws with the fines attached are worth quoting: "Neglecting to repeat the sermon, 9d; entertaining persons of ill character, not exceeding Is 6d; profane cursing, not exceeding 3s 6d; graduates playing cards, not exceeding 5s; undergraduates playing cards, not exceed- ing Is 6d; lying, not exceeding Is 6d; opening door by pick-locks, not exceeding 5s; drunken- ness, not exceeding Is 6d; refusing to give evi- dence, 3s; sending freshmen in studying time, 9d."
This last fine is of particular interest be- cause it shows that the government of Har- vard recognized as legitimate, outside of " study- ing time ", the " Ancient Custom " which made "fags" of the freshmen. A freshman might not keep his hat on in the presence of a senior, was obliged to furnish " baits, balls and footballs, for the use of the other stu- dents ", could not refuse to do any errand upon which it pleased the whim of a senior to send him, and was strictly enjoined to open his door immediately, upon hearing a knock, without first inquiring who was there. Arthur Stanwood Pier, who has written of Harvard and its his- tory,1 tells us that the class of 1798 was the first
1 " The Story of Harvard: " Boston, Little, Brown, and Company,
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freshman class to be emancipated from this condition of servitude and that Judge Story helped to bring this reform about by making a friend of the freshman who had been his fag.
Another curious custom which prevailed at the college in the early days was that of rank- ing the students according to the social po- sition of their parents. One form of punish- ment was to " degrade " a student by putting him down several places on his class list. To be " degraded " was quite a blow, for the reason that the higher part of the class commonly had the best chambers in the college assigned to them and also had the right to help themselves first at table in commons. Inasmuch as the food was none too good at best, " first pick- ings " were probably a very real asset. In 1746 " breakfast was two sizings of bread and a cue of beer while evening Commons were a Pye." About 1760 most of the students breakfasted at the houses where they lodged, and " for dinner had of rather ordinary quality, a suffi- ciency of meat of some kind, either baked or boiled; and at supper we had either a pint of milk and half a biscuit, or a meat pye or some other kind. We were allowed at dinner a cue of beer, which was a half-pint, and a sizing of bread — ... sufficient for one dinner." Each student had his own knife and fork, which he
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carried to table with him and cleansed after- ward by wiping on the table-cloth.
The price of board at the commons in the period of which we are now speaking was be- tween seven and eight shillings a week. " The Buttery," to which there is frequent allusion in the old records, was an important adjunct of the commons, for there, " at a moderate advance on the cost, might be had wines, liquors, groceries, stationery and in general such articles as it was proper and necessary for them to have occasionally." In the light of the restricted table of these early days, it is easy to see why " The Buttery " should have pros- pered greatly, and why a literary club, which was founded in 1795, should have regaled mem- bers at its Saturday evening sessions with liberal helpings of hasty pudding and molasses.
Life at Harvard was still an austerely " sim- ple life." Professor Sidney Willard, of the class of 1798, tells us that " the students who boarded in Commons were obliged to go to the kitchen door with their bowls or pitchers for their sup- pers, where they received their modicum of milk or chocolate in their vessel, held in one hand, and their piece of bread in the other and repaired to their rooms to take their solitary repast."
Nor had Harvard changed very much by the second decade of the nineteenth century,
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when its " plant " consisted of a group of six buildings: Harvard Hall, which contained the college library of fifteen thousand volumes; Holden Chapel; and the four dormitories, —
Massachusetts, Hollis, Stoughton, and Hoi- worthy. The last-named hall was built in 1812 from funds raised by a lottery. In 1814 Uni- versity Hall was completed, with four dining halls for college commons on the ground floor, two kitchens beneath, six lecture rooms on the second floor, and a chapel above. The faculty at this time consisted of thirteen professors, including those of medicine and divinity; four tutors, of whom Edward Everett was one; one instructor in French, and another in rhetoric and oratory.
When the class of 1817 entered the college, there were thirteen resident graduates as well as three hundred and one undergraduates to be taught by this staff. Eighty-six students were in this freshman class, — among them George Bancroft, Caleb Cushing, Samuel A. Eliot, George B. Emerson, Samuel J. May, and Stephen Salisbury. Through the home letters of young Salisbury, which are now in the pos- session of the American Antiquarian Society, one may share intimately in a typical Harvard career of this period.
Salisbury had prepared for college at Leices- ter Academy, near Worcester, Massachusetts,
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and entered college in 1813, when only fifteen years old. At first he is held strictly to ac- count for every penny he spends, not because his people were either poor or parsimonious, but because he was a mere boy. When it came to the time of his Commencement dinner, as he had arrived nearly at man's estate, he was permitted to spend like a man and a gentleman. During his freshman year, however, he had to account to his father for as small a matter as six cents expended on a football, while his mother directs him to skip rope in his room, if he feels the need of exercise in stormy weather! Young Salisbury's Commencement spread was held at " Mr Hearsey's in Cambridge." The agreement and bills for this occasion have been preserved and are interesting enough to be quoted In full, for the reason that they show vividly how such a dinner was conducted in 1817 by well-to-do people whose son was being graduated from Harvard.
AGREEMENT WITH JONATHAN HEAR8ET
FOR AN ENTERTAINMENT AT CAMBRIDGE ON
COMMENCEMENT DAT
Aug. 27, 1817
Mr. Hearsey agrees to provide dinner for 100 persons at $1.50, — that is the course of meats & that of puddings tarts &c, — to be abundant in quantity & to consist of all the variety, that can
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be obtained, of choicest dishes, — Every thing to be of the best quality of its kind.
Mr. Hearsey will provide likewise the cakes of all sorts & all other confectionary & all other articles of whatever description that are needed to make an elegant & tasteful & good dinner in all respects. He will also provide fruit of every variety & in abundance. He wilt provide especially Oranges & Ice Creams. For all of which he is to be paid what- ever they may cost, he taking all due pains to get them at the lowest prices for the best articles of each kind — & engages to procure the very best articles and no others.
He will provide a tent, convenient & commodious for dinner party, for which he is to be paid in ad- dition.
He will provide Waiters, Cooks, Glass & China Ware of all sorts St in abundance for a genteel dinner & all furniture of every sort & kind at his own cost & expence & risk without any addition to the above charge of $1.50 each.
Mr. Salisbury to provide his own liquors, except Bottled Cider which is to be provided by Mr. Hear- sey as a part of the two first courses. Mr. Hearsey is to take charge of the liquors & to return whatever may remain after the entertainment is finished.
Mr. Salisbury's company is to have the use ex- clusively of at least four rooms in Mr. Hearsey 's house for drawing rooms.
Mr. Hearsey engages that there shall be nothing wanting to make the dinner elegant & acceptable in all respects, whether expressed or not in this paper.
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The excellent Hearsey received $228.47 for fulfilling acceptably the conditions of agree- ment as here laid down. In addition there was a bill of ninety-seven dollars for cake and ice- cream, and another of seventy-nine dollars for liquors. Let us follow some of the items in the inventories. We will see that many luxuries cost considerably more a hundred years ago than the same things do now. Some, on the other hand, cost much less. What kind of cigars could they have been which were ob- tainable for two dollars a hundred?
Mr. Stephen Salisbury to Jonathan Hearsey, Dr.
1817 1 To 100 Dinners $150.
V " 20 Doz. Lemmons 10.
Aug. 27 J " 10 lb Almonds 5.
" 1 Box raisins 4.75
" 100 Cigars 2
" 12 lb Figs 3
" Pears & Apples 2.25
" Plumbs & currants 1.25
" 10 Mellons 5.
" .3 Doz. Oranges 3.38
" 2 lb S. Candles 1
" 1 Loaf Sugar 2.50
" two kinds cake 5.
" hire of 8 fruit baskets of Mr.
Farnum 4
" Do green baze 4.38
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To Man waggon bringing up
Liquors $1.50
" keeping 5 Horses 2.50
" Do 2 Horses 1
$208.51
To Lumber for the Tent 23.54
" Labour & nails 14.90
" hire of 4 Sails 4
" Man horse & waggon twice to Boston to fetch & carry the
sails 4.50
255.45
to ice 1
256.45
Deduct amt of Bill of Tent &c returned 27.08
$228.47
Reed Pay in full Sep 2, 1817
Jonathan Hearset.
The ice-cream served in quart moulds at this dinner cost two dollars a quart; five plum- cakes, which weighed ten pounds each, cost twenty-five dollars in addition to twenty dol- lars expended on their ornamentation. There were five pink cakes, too, which weighed six pounds each, and which, duly ornamented, cost thirty-five dollars. The liquors, which, as has been said, consisted of Madeira wine, porter,
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claret wine, port, brandy, and " Jamaica spirits" came to seventy-nine dollars. And there was a great deal of bottled cider, besides.
But for the degree and diploma of the young gentleman in whose honor all these things were being eaten and drunk, Stephen Salisbury, Senior, paid the modest sum of ten dollars. Then, as now, it was not the educational side of Harvard which cost a parent dear.
Not long after young Salisbury was gradu- ated from Harvard, the governing body of the college began to be called the " Faculty of the University," students were given a wider choice of studies, and they might or might not board at the commons as they pleased. This liberal- izing tendency was due to Professor George Ticknor, a graduate of Dartmouth, who had studied for some years in Europe, and to Presi- dent Kirkland. When President Kirkland re- signed, in 1821), on account of ill health, he was succeeded by Josiah Quincy, who had been for three terms mayor of Boston and whose chief service to his college was that he crushed out the riotous and rebellious spirit that had for so long been a part of Harvard life. Accord- ing to Doctor Andrew P. Peabody, "outrages involving not only destruction of property but peril of life — as for instance, the blowing up of public rooms in inhabited buildings — were then occurring every year." After the great
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Rebellion of 1834 — a demonstration in the course of which torpedoes were set off in chapel — all the sophomores but three went on strike and so were sent home. Quincy was burned in effigy by the juniors, and the college work practically discontinued throughout the spring. Then rebellions disappeared from Harvard for all time. Very likely this was because Har- vard boys had now become " men."
Before taking leave of this long-ago Harvard to study its great rival, Yale, let us enjoy Doc- tor Peabody's picturesque account of student life at this period, a time when the college course cost only about two hundred dollars a year, and the long vacation came in winter in order that poor youths could eke out their income by teaching country schools.
" The feather bed — mattresses not having come into general use — was regarded as a valuable chattel; but ten dollars would have been a fair auction price for the other contents of an average room, which were a pine bed- stead, washstand, table, and desk, a cheap rocking-chair and from two to four other chairs of the plainest fashion. I doubt whether any fellow student of mine owned a carpet. . . . Coal was just coming into use and hardly found its way into the college. The students' rooms — several of the recitation rooms as well — were heated by open-wood fires. Almost every
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room had, too, its trwumittenda, a cannon-ball supposed to have been derived from the ar- senal, which on very cold days was heated to a t red heat and placed as calorific radiant on a skillet or on some extemporized metallic stand; while at other seasons it was often utiUzed by being rolled downstairs at such times as might most nearly bisect a proctor's night-sleep. Friction matches — according to Faraday the most useful invention of our age — were not yet. Coals were carefully buried in ashes over night to start the morning fire; while in summer the evening lamp could be lighted only by the awkward and often baffling process of striking fire with flint, steel, and tinder box.
" The student's life was hard. Morning prayers were in summer at six; in winter about half an hour before sunrise in a bitterly cold chapel. Thence half of each class passed into the several recitation rooms in the same build- ing — University Hall — and three quarters of an hour later the bell rang for a second set of recitations, including the remaining half of the students. Then came breakfast, which in the college commons consisted solely of coffee, hot rolls and butter, except when the members of a mess had succeeded in pinning to the nether surface of the table, by a two-pronged fork, some slices of meat from the previous day's dinner. Between ten and twelve every
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student attended another recitation or lecture. Dinner was at half past twelve, — a meal not _ deficient in quantity but by no means appe- tizing to those who had come from neat homes and well-ordered tables. There was another recitation in the afternoon, except on Satur- day; then evening prayers at six, or in winter at early twilight; then the evening meal, plain as the breakfast, with tea instead of coffee and cold bread of the consistency of wool, for the hot rolls. After tea the dormitories rang with song and merriment till the study bell, at eight in winter, at nine in summer, sounded the cur- few for fun and frolic, proclaiming dead silence throughout the college premises.
" On Sundays all were required to be in residence, not excepting even those whose homes were in Boston; and all were required to attend worship twice each day at the college chapel. On Saturday alone was there permis- sion to leave Cambridge, absence from town at any other time being a punishable offence. This weekly liberty was taken by almost every member of the college, Boston being the uni- versal resort; though seldom otherwise than on foot, the only public conveyance then being a two-horse stage-coach, which ran twice a day."
Saybrook, Connecticut, was the town first chosen to be the site of what is to-day Yale
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University. Connecticut had been bearing its share of Harvard's support but, alter some fifty years, began to feel the need of a collegiate school of its own. The idea took definite form at a meeting of Connecticut pastors in Sep- tember, 1701, as a result of which each one present made a gift of books to the proposed college. The infant institution thus started was presented by a citizen of Saybrook with the use of a house and lot. And this plant was quite adequate for some time, inasmuch as the college, during the first six months of its life, consisted of a president and a single student! In fifteen years only fifty-five young men were graduated.
It would seem as if the competition for so liny a college would not have been keen, but according to the entertaining " General His- tory of Connecticut," which Reverend Samuel Peters published in 1781, there was as much turmoil over the final home of this little in- stitution as if it had been several times its modest size. He says:
" A vote was passed at Hartford, to remove the College to Weathersfield; and another at Newhaven, that it should be removed to that town. Hartford, in order to carry its vote into execution, prepared teams, boats, and a mob, and privately set off for Saybrook, and seized upon the College apparatus, library and stu-
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dents, and carried all to Weathersficld. This redoubled the jealousy of the saints at New- haven, who thereupon determined to fulfil their vote; and accordingly, having collected a mob sufficient for the enterprise, they set out for Weathersfield, where they seized by surprise the students, library, &c, &c. But on the road to Newhaven, they were overtaken by the Hartford mob, who, however, after an unhappy battle, were obliged to retire with only a part of the library and part of the students. The quarrel increased daily, everybody expecting a war; and no doubt such would have been the case had not the peacemakers of Massachu- setts Bay interposed with their usual friend- ship, and advised their dear friends of Hart- ford to give up the College to Newhaven. This was accordingly done to the great joy of the crafty Massachusetts, who always greedily seek their own prosperity, though it ruin their best neighbors. The College being thus fixed forty miles further west from Boston than it was before tended greatly to the interest of Harvard College; for Saybrook and Hartford out of pure grief, sent their sons to Harvard instead of to the College at Newhaven."
This account of Yale's early history is full of obvious exaggerations; but it is a fact that the college led a wandering life for more than seventeen years, and that the rivalry over its
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site was far from friendly at the last. Scarcely had the college chosen a habitation, however, when its outlook quite changed. For now there came to it some valuable gifts, which deter- mined its name and its bent. Elihu Yale, who gave these gifts, had appropriately been born in New Haven. His epitaph in the churchyard at Wrexham in Wales is often quoted:
" Born in America, in Europe bred, In Afric travelled and in Asia wed, Where long he lived and thrived; at London
dead. Much Good, some 111 he did; so hope's all even, And that his Soul through Mercy's gone to
Heaven* "
This epitaph differs from many of its class in being really autobiographic. For, though born in New England, Yale had been educated abroad and had made a fortune and a career in the East Indies. At the time he sent his first gifts to Yale, he was Governor of Fort St. George, now Madras. These gifts consisted of a large box of books, his portrait by Sir God- frey Kneller, the arms of King George, and £200 worth of English goods. The portrait is still preserved in the Art Gallery, but the .coat of arms was destroyed at the time of the Revolution. From a contemporary account we learn that, after receiving these gifts, the
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trustees " solemnly named " the new building Yale College. " Upon which the Hon. Col. Taylor represented Governor Yale in a speech expressing his great satisfaction; which ended we passed to the Church and there the Com- mencement was carried on. . . . After which were graduated ten young men, whereupon the Hon. Gov. Saltonstall in a Latin speech con- gratulated the Trustees in their success and in the comfortable appearance with relation to the school. All which ended, the gentlemen returned to the college hall, where they were entertained with a splendid dinner, and the ladies at the same time were also entertained in the Library. After which they sung the first four verses of the 65th Psalm, and so the day ended."
The course of study pursued at old Yale as at old Harvard was based on the ancient scholastic curriculum of the English univer- sities, the backbone of which was theology and logic. Though not specifically designed, as Harvard had been, to train young men for the ministry, this second New England college kept that end quite distinctly in view, and as the brethren who founded the college were, their successors have continued to be, Congre- gational ministers in the State of Connecticut. Of the one hundred and ten tutors connected with the college during its first century, only
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forty-nine were laymen; and the president of the institution has always been a clergyman, When Timothy Cutler, chosen in 1719 to be head of the college, turned Churchman and began to draw after him some of the tutors who had become interested in the Episcopacy through Bishop Berkeley, he and the men thus disaffected were excused from further connection with the college. But there was no ill-feeling about this, as is clear from the fact that Berke- ley conveyed to the trustees, on his return to England in 1732, his farm of ninety-six acres at Whitehall, the income of which was to be used for scholarships. The following year he sent the college nearly a thousand volumes, valued at five hundred pounds, the best col- lection of books that, up to that time, had been brought to America.
South Middle College, built in 1752 from money which was raised partly by a lottery, was modeled on " red Massachusetts " at Cam- bridge. It is the oldest Yale building still standing. In and out of its ancient doors, more than a century and a half ago, strolled students in caps and gowns — for this academic costume was worn at Yale in the eighteenth century — as well as tutors in frock coats, cocked hats, and perukes; a curious " View of Yale College", made in 1786, preserves these types for us. Freshmen, at Yale as at Harvard,
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I
were treated almost like the fags of the English public schools in these early days. From a book of " Freshman Laws " the following rules have been extracted:
" The Freshmen, as well as other under- graduates, are to be uncovered, and are for- bidden to wear their hats (unless in stormy weather) in the front door-yard of the Presi- dent's or Professor's house, or within ten rods of the person of the President, eight rods of the Professor, and five rods of a tutor."
" A Freshman shall not play with any mem- ber of an upper class without being asked."
" In case of personal insult a junior may call up a Freshman and reprehend him. A Sopho- more, m like case, must obtain leave from a Senior, and then he may discipline a Fresh- man."
" Freshmen shall not run in college-yard, or up or down stairs, or call to anyone through a college window."
Students might not even address each other in the English language at the Yale of these far-away days, but had to talk in Latin! One mode of punishment was for the president to cuff or box on the ear, " in a solemn and formal manner, at chapel freshmen and commencing Sophomores " who had broken one or another of the endless rules of the institution. But there was no bodily flogging such as that at
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Harvard which Samuel Sewall describes with such unction. And some of the punishments were humorously fitted to the crime in the manner advocated by Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. Thus a student who had been dis- orderly from too much drink, or had been late at prayers, was sometimes appointed " Butler's waiter " and compelled to ring the chapel bell for a week or two. The butler here, as at Har- vard, was a very imposing person, a licensed monopolist, who kept his buttery in a con- venient apartment of South Middle and dis- pensed to such as had money or credit " cider, metheglin, and strong beer, together with loaf sugar (' saccharum rigidum') pipes, tobacco, etc.**
During the Revolution, the college was all but broken up, only the seniors, under Tutor Dwight, staying at New Haven. No public Commencement was held between 1777 and 1781, and the salaries of the college officers at this time and when the war closed were paid in terms of beef, pork, wheat, and Indian corn.
This stringency in the currency helps us to understand one worthy parson's protest over a certain student entertainment of the day. In 1788 the " Junior Sophister Class " gave a theatrical performance, during election week, of " Tancred and Sigismunda," and followed
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it with a farce of the lads' own composing, re- lating to events in the Revolutionary War. From the students' point of view, the occasion was a very successful one, but Reverend An- drew Eliot was tremendously shocked, we learn, by the language of some of the charac- ters in the farce. He strongly disapproved, also, of impersonation of women by young men, which the exigencies of the situation made necessary. " Female apparcll and ornaments," he writes in obvious horror, " were put on some, contrary to an express statute, Besides it cost the lads £60! " The italics are ours; they serve to suggest the climax of this worthy gentleman's indignation. For, revolting as it was to his taste to see college boys tricked out as women, the expenditure by Yale students just then of sixty pounds for a theatrical per- formance was an offence far more appalling.
It was just at this time that Yale enjoyed the single literary period of its history. John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, David Humph- reys, and Joel Barlow, Yale men all, who had aided the cause of Independence with sword as well as with pen, together with three Hart- ford wits, contributors to The American Mer- cury, constituted at this time a mutual ad- miration society which was generally spoken of as " The Seven Pleiades of Connecticut." The poems they wrote are little read nowa-
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days, but they are historically interesting none the less — particularly Barlow's ColumMad. And John Trumbull and Timothy Dwight are entitled to special mention here, for the reason that they were soon made tutors of the college and by their influence served to broaden the course of study in the direction of the humani- ties.
Timothy Dwight was the president of Yale from 1795-1817, succeeding in that high office Doctor Ezra Stiles, who had served from 1777 and was widely renowned as the best scholar of his time in New England. Dwight is less famed as a writer than as an executive officer, but his " Travels in New England and New York " is one of the best books about old New Eng- land extant and has probably made him known to thousands of people only incidently inter- ested in his relation to the college. Under his administration, the first of Yale's professional schools — that for the study of medicine — was organized in 1810 with the assistance of the State Medical Society, while under his successor, Jeremiah Day, who served the college from 1817 to 1846, the Divinity School in 1822, and the Law School two years later, began their careers. Thus by 1825 Yale was really a uni- versity.
Because Yale is in a sense a daughter of Harvard — her founders, early presidents, and
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tutors being of necessity Harvard men — some comparison between the institutions naturally suggests itself. Founded under similar aus- pices and for similar purposes, the two colleges have diverged widely in spirit. Cambridge came to be known as the source of most of what is best in American letters; New Haven has never claimed any such distinction. A certain severity, however, has always marked the training given at Yale. Thus, the aim being to fit students for the hard realities of life, " discipline rather than culture, power rather than grace, ' light ' rather than ' sweetness ' has ever been . . . the result of her teachings." l The third college to be started in New England was Brown, which has just been celebrating its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. This college was Baptist in its origin and in its aims. It owes its existence to the very natural desire of Roger Williams's followers to secure for their churches educated ministers who would not have to undergo the restrictions of denomina- tional influence and sectarian tests. Just as Roger Williams's principles had brought him into collision with the ruling powers of Massa- chusetts, so the principles of his followers were far from being in accord with those in charge of the higher institutions of education in New England. There was nothing for the Baptists
1 Henry A. Been in Scribner'i Monthly for April, 1876.
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to do, therefore, but to start a college of their own.
At Hopewell in New Jersey, such a college or seminary had already been inaugurated (in 1756), by the Reverend Isaac Eaton and had attained such success that certain zealous Bap- tists determined to give an institution of the same kind to the settlement which Roger Will- iams had founded. The Reverend James Man- ning, a graduate of the Hopewell Academy, was entrusted with the business end of the undertaking, and in the summer of 1763, visited Newport to arrange for the establishment of his college. One very interesting and signifi- cant thing about the charter which Doctor Manning soon obtained was that, while it se- cured ample privileges to the Baptists by several clear and explicit provisions, it recog- nized throughout the grand Rhode Island prin- ciple of civil and religious freedom. Thus, though Brown was then and is to-day a Bap- tist college, its governing body is by law dis- tributed among Friends, Congregation alists, and Episcopalians as well as Baptists. Yet the president of this institution, which Man- ning succeeded in launching in 1764, " must forever be of the denomination called Baptists."
Though Rhode Island had been selected by the projectors of this college as the home of their new institution, and though a liberal and
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ample charter had been secured, the college was still without funds, without students, and without any definite means of support. Its executive officer must obtain his income from a church pastorate until such time as the col- lege should become a " going concern." For this reason it was that the College of Rhode Island began its career in Warren, ten miles from Providence, where Manning proceeded to discharge the duties of minister as well as those of a teacher. At the second annual meet- ing of the corporation, held in Newport, Sep- tember 3, 1765, this resourceful man was formally elected, in the words of the records, " President of the College, Professor of Lan- guages and other branches of learning, with full power to act in these capacities at Warren or elsewhere." On that same day, as appears from an original paper now on file in the ar- chives of the Brown Library, the president matriculated his first student, William Rogers, a lad of fourteen, the son of Captain William Rogers of Newport. Not only was this lad the first student, but he was also the first freshman class. Indeed for a period of nearly ten months, he constituted the entire student body!
At the first Commencement of the college, held in the meeting-house at Warren, Septem- ber 7, 1769, seven students took their Bache-
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lor's degree. The occasion was so important that there was then and there inaugurated the earliest State holiday in the history of Rhode Island. From a contemporary account, we learn that both the president and the candi- dates for degrees showed their American loy- alty on this day by wearing clothing of Ameri- can manufacture. We are glad to be told, also, that all present " behaved with great de- corum."
Thus far the new institution possessed abso- lutely no college edifices, but so great was the interest aroused by the first Commencement that Providence and Newport now bestirred themselves to raise subscriptions which would bring the infant institution to their respective settlement. Providence won the day — and the college. " The people of Newport had raised ", says Manning in this connection, " four thousand pounds lawful money, tak- ing in their unconditional subscription. But Providence presented four thousand, two hun- dred and eighty pounds, lawful money and advantages superior to Newport in other re- spects." On May 14, 1770, therefore, the foundations of the first college building, Uni- versity Hall, were laid in Providence, John Brown, who led in the destruction of Gaspee, two years later, placing the corner-stone. The site selected was on the crest of a hill which
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had formed part of the " home lot " of Chadd Brown, associate and friend of Roger Williams and the " first Baptist Elder in Rhode Island."
Yet the college was not yet called Brown, this name being first given to it in 1804 in honor of Honorable Nicholas Brown, who had been graduated under Manning in 1786, and who in 1702 began his benefactions by presenting to the corporation the sum of five hundred dollars, to be expended in the purchase of law books for the library. In 1804 he gave to his college the then unprecedented sum of five thousand dollars as a foundation for a profes- sorship of oratory and belles lettres. When he died In September, 1841, the entire sum of his recorded benefactions was estimated at one hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
During the Revolution, the college edifice on its lofty hill was occupied as a barracks and afterwards as a hospital by the American and French forces. When the war was over, Presi- dent Manning represented Rhode Island in the Congress of the Federation. Brown may thus quite justly lay claim to intimate participa- tion in the making of these United States. Manning died in 1791 and was succeeded by Jonathan Maxcy. When Doctor Maxcy re- signed the presidency in 1802, Asa Messer took the office. To him, in 1896, succeeded the Reverend Doctor Francis Wayland, who served
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until 1855. During these various changes in administration, the college had been steadily growing in the number of its buildings and in power. At the time when Manning was strug- gling to establish the college, Reverend Morgan Edwards was securing subscriptions abroad for its support; and never has Brown lacked both effective friends among the money-givers and impressive scholars in its faculty.
Picturesque customs, too, and a very gener- ous attitude towards " town " as well as " gown ", have here obtained from the beginning. The John Brown who laid the corner-stone of the first college building graciously treated the entire assemblage to punch after his labors were over, and similar hospitality, though differently expressed, has been extended by the college to the community ever since. Com- mencement at Brown has been a community holiday from the earliest days of the college. An " old citizen ", writing in the Providence Journal of July 2, 1851, concerning the college about 1800, has said that " everybody had commencement day. It was the season when country cousins returned all the calls and visits which they had received the past year. ' You will come and see us at commencement ' was the stereotyped invitation. And sure enough they did come. The principal mode of con- veyance was the square-top chaise and the
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visitors would begin to arrive on Monday. On Tuesday towards sunset every avenue to the town was filled with them. In the stable-yards of the ' Golden Ball Inn ', the ' Montgomery Tavern \ and other public houses on Wednes- day morning, you could see hundreds of their chaises, each numbered by the hostlers on the dashers with chalk to prevent mistakes.
" The literary exercises of commencement season began on Tuesday. . . . How long the twilight of Tuesday used to appear. For the town was on tiptoe to witness the illumination of the college building this evening. . . . Scarcely is the sun down before the human current be- gins to set towards the hill and before it is fairly dark the college yard is filled with ladies and gentlemen of all ages and sizes. Not a light is to be seen at the college windows. Anon the college bell rings and eight tallow candles at each window shed their rich luxuriant yellow light on the crowd below. . . . The band arrange themselves on the front steps of the old chapel, and make the welkin ring again. . . . All could not ' go to college \ all could not talk Latin or make almanacs, but all could see an illumination and could hear music. So those who could do no more were fully satisfied with the college for these benefits and advantages."
Commencement itself was held in the Old Baptist Church, erected in 1775 with this very
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use in mind, and the " learned faculty " were wont to occupy the stage on the north side of the pulpit, while the graduating class sat on the south side, and the band of music valiantly did their duty in the west gallery. At noon the entire company marched to the college for dinner, after which came three hours more of oratory — again in the Old Baptist. When the program came finally to an end and degrees had been conferred, the procession once more proceeded to the college — and Commencement proper was at an end. A religious meeting at the Old Baptist in the evening brought the day's festivities to an appropriate close.
The friendly relations between the students and the community at Brown is very likely due to the fact that among the most important of the early rules was that providing " that each student treat the inhabitants of the town . . . with civility and good manners." It was long one of the entrance requirements that every student transcribe these laws and cus- toms; the resulting copy was then signed by the president and was kept in the student's possession, while an undergraduate, as evi- dence of his admission. Before me, as I write, is a copy of these " Laws And Customs of Rhode Island College, 1774."
College rules during the eighteenth century are all a good deal alike, but Rhode Island Col-
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lege showed its individuality in this provision, at least: " Such as regularly and statedly keep the seventh day as the Sabbath are exempted from the law [requiring church attendance 'on the First Day of the week steadily 'I and are only required to abstain from secular con cerns which would interrupt their fellow stu- dents." Another rule which would be found at this college only is: " That no student wear his hat within the College walls, excepting those who steadily attend the Friends' Meeting." There was, too, a unique provision exempting " young gentlemen of the Hebrew nation " from the rule which made it an offence to deny that the New Testament was of divine authority.
Ample provision was made that the students at this institution should be well nourished. In 1773 these orders were established for the regulation of the commons:
FOR DINNER EVERY WEEK
Two meals of salt beef and pork, with peas, beans, greens, roots, etc., and puddings. For drink, good small beer and cider.
Two meals of fresh meat, roasted, baked, broiled, or fried, with proper sauce or vegetables.
One meal of soup and fragments.
One meal of boiled fresh meat with proper sauce and broth.
One meal of salt or fresh fish, with brown bread.
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FOR BREAKFAST
Tea, coffee, chocolate, or milk porridge. With tea or coffee, white bread with butter, or brown bread, toasted with butter. With chocolate or milk porridge, white bread without butter. With tea coffee and chocolate brown sugar.
FOR SUPPER
Milk, with hasty pudding, rice, samp, white bread, etc. Or milk porridge, tea, coffee or choco- late, as for breakfast.
The several articles or provisions above men- tioned, especially dinners, are to be diversified and changed as to their succession through the week, or as much as may be agreeable; with the addition • of puddings, apple pies, dumplings, cheese, etc., to be interspersed through the dinners, as often as may be convenient and suitable.
All the articles of provision shall be good, genuine and unadulterated.
The meals are to be provided at stated time, and the cookery is to be well and neatly executed.
That the steward sit at meals with the stu- dents, unless prevented by company or business and exercise the same authority as is customary and needful for the head of a family at his table.
That the steward be exemplary in his moral con- duct, and do not fail to give information to the authority of the College against any of the students who may transgress any of the College orders and
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regulations; and to this purpose that he keep by him a copy of the same.
For the services above mentioned, that the stew- ard be allowed and paid by every person boarding in Commons, one dollar per week; to be paid at the expiration of each quarter;' if not, interest until paid.
This was in the earliest days of the Commons and before the Revolution, when the purchasing power of a dollar was large. The annual ex- penses at Brown I find advertised somewhat later on as
College bills, including Tuition, Room,
Rent Library etc $54
Board in Commons about $75
$129
Dartmouth College may be traced back to the interesting project of founding at Bermuda an institution for the education of Indian youth, to promote which Bishop Berkeley came to America on money left to him by Hester Vanhomrigh, after she had been flouted by Dean Swift! ' For among the first students educated at Yale College on the income of the Berkeley estate was Eleazer Wheelock, founder of Dartmouth; and Wheelock, in 1755, had
1 See my " Romance of Old New England Roof-Trees."
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opened More's Indian Charity School because he had Berkeley's- ideal distinctly in his mind. The first Indian youth received into Eleazer Wheelock's family was Samson Occom, a Mo- hegan Indian who was so much of a scholar and possessed such rare personal charm that, when sent to England in the interest of Whee- lock's new institution, he was able to induce all the great people, from the king down, to subscribe to the projected college. This re- markable Indian never lost sight for a mo- ment, however, of the object of his visit and, when he had pushed his subscription up to eleven hundred pounds and placed this treasure under a board of trust headed by Lord Dart- mouth, he calmly returned to his own America and to Wheelock, who had so greatly trusted him.
In August, 1770, less than a month after George III had evoked the charter " wise and lib- eral " which gave to the New World the insti- tution which was to be called Dartmouth Col- lege, — in recognition of the kindness and in- terest of the second Earl of Dartmouth, — Wheelock, with teams and laborers, pushed his way through the " dreary wood " to Han- over to begin his herculean task of getting the college started. The first building was a log hut about eighteen feet square, built " without stone, brick, glass or nail." Oiled paper prob-
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ably did duty for windows, after the fashion of the time in all poorer habitations; and no nails were needed, because the logs were dove- tailed.
To this hut came soon Mrs. Wheelock, Tutor Woodward, thirty students (among them two Indians), and four slaves, the lady and the tutor riding in a carriage which had been given by John Thornton of England.1 But for all they rode in a carriage, they had not found the approach easy; trees had to be felled before them as they pushed their way into this wilder- ness. Yet they made so notable an accession to the little colony that with their coming col- lege life at Dartmouth may be said to have be- gun.
In the year following, 1771, Sir John Went- worth, attended by a retinue of sixty gentlemen, came up from Portsmouth to be present at Dartmouth's first Commencement. This was a really brave act on the part of the elegant Colonial governor; for there was danger from wild beasts as well as from wild Indians in journeying to Dartmouth thus early, and his party probably had to camp out at least two nights on the way. Wheelock, to be sure, had come before, but in the words of the college ditty:
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" Eleazer Wheelock was a very pious man, He went into the wilderness to teach the In- di-an."
It is one thing to undertake a hazardous journey in pursuit of an ideal; it is quite an- other to do the same thing as part of one's official routine. When Timothy Dwight, presi- dent of Yale College, visited Hanover in 1797, the settlement contained only forty houses. So I repeat that Governor John Wentworth is deserving of distinct credit for having been present at a Dartmouth Commencement as early as 1771.
During the first ten years of its life, Dart- mouth graduated ninety-nine men as against fifty-five at Harvard and thirty-six at Yale. And Dartmouth was the only college in New England that kept her doors open and con- ferred degrees each year during the Revolu- tion. To be sure, the war did not come very near to the college in the wilderness. "Some reports of cannon," Wheelock wrote in his diary, June 17, 1775. " We wait with im- patience to hear the occasion and the event." How long they had to wait for news of the battle of Bunker Hill I do not know. But it takes us back in a flash to those far-away days, and especially to the unique conditions at this primitive college, to learn that the cannon's sound was first detected by one of the Indians
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who chanced to be lying with his ear to the ground.
When President Wheelock died in 1779, at the age of sixty-eight, he was succeeded by his son, John, then twenty-five years of age. For a period of thirty-six years this incumbent maintained a successful administration, en- larging the Faculty, extending the curriculum, providing new buildings, establishing a medi- cal department, and visiting France, Holland, and England to seek further financial aid for his institution. Under his administration, after what has been described as " a long agony of effort," Dartmouth Hall first came into being. In 1795, the College Church, in which Com- mencement exercises have since been held, was built by private subscription. In the con- test between the college and the university, this church was once held by garrison and bar- ricade for three days and three nights, in order to make sure that the college Commencement of August 17, 1817, might be held there just as previous Commencements had been.
Daniel Webster, who defended Dartmouth's interests in one of the most famous law cases in which a college was ever involved,1 gradu-
1 This was one of the most important cases in constitutional law ever decided by the United States Supreme Court. The issue involved was the right conferral upon Dartmouth Trustees by the British Crown in 1769 to govern the college and fill all vacancies in their body. This right was ably defended by Daniel Webster. See New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. v, p. 796.
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ated from the college in 1801. Webster, was the star of this class, as Rufus Choate was of the class graduated eighteen years later. Salmon P. Chase, whom Lincoln declared to be " one and a half times bigger than any other man I have ever seen ", received his degree here in 1816.
The tradition of Indian obligation still lin- gers at this college among the hills of New Hampshire and is commemorated on Class Day by a very beautiful custom. For then, on the eve of their entrance into the real battle of life, the seniors assemble in the college park and, before the tower of mediaeval pattern which has been erected near the site of the old pine, renowned for its traditional relation with Indian students, together smoke pipes of peace, all of which are solemnly broken afterwards. While the Dartmouth of the twentieth cen- tury thus follows a custom dear to the Red- men who once roamed this very place, the spirit of Eleazer Wheelock must hover very close to the college which he founded out of love for the Indian, and which he lived to see grow up into a very inspiring and impressive institution.
Williams College, the fifth institution for higher education to be established in New England, traces its history back to the troub- lous times of the French and Indian Wars. Its
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site adjoins that of Fort Massachusetts, the farthest west of the chain of forts which con- stituted our defence against Indian encroach- ments; and the man for whom the college is named was Ephraim Williams, captain of the company of soldiers here stationed. As a reward for his faithful service in this con- nection, Williams was, in 1750, granted one hundred and ninety acres in the east township of the Hoosac and thus became the owner of the very meadow in which Fort Massachusetts stood. By his will the doughty captain pro- vided that within five years after peace had been established, his real estate should be sold, and from the income thus derived there should be maintained and supported " a free school in the township west of Fort Massa- chusetts (commonly called West Township) forever, provided such township fall within the jurisdiction of the province of Massachu- setts Bay, and continue under that jurisdic- tion, and provided also the Governor of said province, shall (when a suitable number of inhabitants are settled there) incorporate the same into a town by the name of Williams- town." This will was dated July 22, 1755, Williams fell on the September 8 following, while engaged in the expedition against Crown Point. Thirty years passed before anything at all
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was done toward establishing the school (or which this donation provided. Then the neces- sary first steps were taken by Theodore Sedg- wick and eight other persons of the highest distinction in Western Massachusetts, almost all of whom were graduates of Yale College. That the new institution was to be more than a " free school " for Williamstown children was made clear at the very start by the vote that the school building be constructed of bricks and be seventy-two feet in length, forty feet wide, and three stories high. It was also provided that the school should be open " to the free citizens of the American states indis- criminately."
Following the customs of the times, a lottery was held to raise additional funds for building, and with the money thus obtained and a sub- scription of two thousand dollars from the resi- dents of Williamstown, the school was opened October 20, 1791, with the Reverend Ebenezer Fitch, a graduate of Yale College, as preceptor, and Mr. John Lester as assistant. There were two departments at the beginning — a gram- mar school, or academy, and an English free school. In the first the usual college studies of that day were taught. In the second, dis- continued in 1793 when the institution was formally recognized as of collegiate standing, instruction was given in the common English
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studies to boys from the higher classes of the town.
To the college opportunities here offered the response was enthusiastic from the first. No institution of similar appeal then existed nearer than Hanover, New Hampshire, or New Haven, Connecticut. Thus the president was able to write to a friend as early as 1799: " Things go well in our infant seminary. . . . But our ambition is to make good scholars rather than add to our numbers and in this we mean not to be outdone by any college in New Eng- land." With this early ambition of a Williams president, it is interesting to connect an extract from the inaugural address of President Hop- kins, made nearly forty years later: " I have no ambition", he declared, "to build up here what would be called a great institution; the wants of the community do not require it. But I do desire and shall labor, that it may be a safe college; that its reputation may be sus- tained and raised still higher . . . that here there may be health, and cheerful study, and kind feelings, and pure morals." This ambition has been nobly realized at Williams; quality rather than quantity has been the aim from the first. From a devout group of Williams men emanated the great Board of American For- eign Missions, and it is to Williams that we owe, too, that famous definition of a college
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education: " Mark Hopkins on one end of a log with a student at the other." *
Williams' first class, which was graduated in 1796, consisted of six members, and by the second decade of the nineteenth century there were not more than eighty students in the whole college, so that it was obviously rather alarming when one half of them de- clared their intention of withdrawing, with President Moore, to Amherst College on the other side of the mountains. The isolation of the college was felt at this time to be an almost insuperable barrier to its continued growth. To Emory Washburn, who entered the junior class in 1815, we are indebted for the following vivid glimpses of life in the Hoosac Valley at this early period:
" During my residence in College, nothing in the form of stage-coach or vehicle for public communication ever entered the town. Once a week, a solitary messenger, generally on horseback, came over the Florida Mountain, bringing us our letters from Boston and the eastern part of the State. . . . And by some similar mode and at hke intervals we heard
ing of Williams alumni held in New York to discuss the college1! pressing need of books and apparatus said — after expressing his realisation of the value and need of these things: " But give me a log-cabin in the center of the State of Ohio, with one room in it, and a bench with Mark Hopkins on one end of it and me on the other, and that would be a college good enough for me."
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from Stockbridge, Pittsfield, Troy and Albany. With the exception of these not a ripple of the commotions that disturbed the world outside of these barriers of hills and mountains, ever reached the unruffled calm of our valley life. In coming from my home in Leicester, Massa- chusetts, I was compelled to rely upon stage and chance. My route was by stage to Pitts- field, and thence by a providential team or carriage, the remainder of my journey. I have often smiled as I have recalled with what per- severing assiduity I waylaid every man who passed by the hotel, in order to find some one who would consent to take as a passenger a luckless wight in pursuit of an education under such difficulties.
" While such was the difficulty of access to the College, it presented little, to the eye of one who visited it for the first time, to reward the struggle it had cost him. When I joined it it bad two buildings, and, I think, fifty-eight students, with two professors and two tutors. The East College was a fine, plain imposing structure, four stories in "height, built of brick. . . . The West College contained the Chapel, which occupied the second and third stories of the south end of the building. . . . The only water we had to use, was drawn from a spring at the foot of the hill, south of the East College. And to that every student from both Colleges
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repaired with his pail as his necessities required. The consequence was, it must be confessed, that there was no excessive use of that element of comfort and neatness. Not one of the rooms or passage ways was painted. No one of the rooms was papered or ever had a carpet on it. And I do not believe the entire furniture of any one room, excepting perhaps the bed, could have cost, or would have sold for, five dollars. -
" And yet it was not from the poverty of the students that the style of their rooms and their surroundings was thus humble and poverty- stricken. It was borrowed from the tradition- ary habits and fashion of the institution. It had grown up in a sequestered spot with limited means, while many of the early students had resorted to it because of its cheap education, and there was next to nothing to awaken any rivalry in the style of dress, furniture, or living, or even to arouse a comparison between these and what may have prevailed in other col- leges."1
Even at Williams, however, there was a good deal of drinking, as our " Old grad " goes on to admit. " Everybody at that day drank and so be it excited the animal spirits, it mat- tered not much what the liquor was." Will-
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iams students, like the other college boys of these early days, suffered greatly, it is plain, from a lack of organized athletics which would have provided a vent for their animal spirits.
Bowdoin College only narrowly escaped hav- ing the name of John Hancock bestowed upon it. For its beginnings date back to the days when the political power of Hancock was at its zenith, and had his friends con- trolled both houses of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts, — as they did one house, — his name instead of that of his suc- cessor, James Bowdoin, would have distin- guished the new institution then just being started " in the vague Orient of Down East." From the portrait by Robert Feke which hangs in one of the halls of the college, Governor Bowdoin is seen to be a man of serene dignity and elegant habiliments. His bronze velvet coat, his gold-embroidered waistcoat of pearl-col- ored satin, his curling wig, and his lace ruffles all bespeak an imposing personality. Yet the special patron and benefactor of this strug- gling little college in the wilds of Maine was not the beruffled governor at all, but his son, James, at one time Minister Plenipotentiary to Spain.
No less difficulty was experienced in determin- ing the local habitation of the college than in fixing upon its name. Portland contended
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vigorously for the honor, intending that the seat of the institution should be in Gorham, near by. But Brunswick on the Androscoggin was finally selected as the site, five townships in the wilds of Maine were donated as a source of funds, and the bill approving of the insti- tution was definitively signed by Governor Samuel Adams on June 24, 1794. Thus Bowdoin becomes the sixth college of the New England group, though it was not until 1802 that its first class was admitted. The first president chosen was Reverend Joseph McKeen, who had been graduated at Dartmouth in 1774, and was then a pastor at Beverly, Massachusetts. He was inaugurated in the grove of pines be- hind the present group of college buildings. His term saw only one class graduated, how- ever, the first, in which seven students took their degrees. Nathan Lord, who was the honored president of Dartmouth for a great many years, was a member of this class.
The second president of Bowdoin was Rev- erend Jesse Appleton (Dartmouth, 1792), who was inaugurated in December, 1807. The twelve years during which he served were memorable and very successful ones in the history of the college. The number of stu- dents had now considerably increased, the teaching force had been strengthened, and from Honorable James Bowdoin (Harvard, 1771), a
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library, a gallery of paintings, a large collec- tion of minerals, and some valuable apparatus had been inherited.1
To succeed President Appleton, the Corpor- ation elected, in 1819, the Reverend William Allen, a graduate of Harvard who was at this tune president of Dartmouth. The nineteen years of his service was signalized by the open- ing of the Maine Medical School in connection with the college, a school of which Doctor Nathan Smith, Doctor John D. Wells, and Doctor John Delcmater were the first pro- fessors. Of Doctor Smith, who was very emi- nent in his profession, an amusing story is told. One day a messenger summoned him in all haste to set a broken limb, but when he reached the house to which he had been called, the patient was discovered to be a goose. Very gravely the doctor examined the fracture, opened his case, set and bound the limb, and promising to call the next day, took his un- perturbed departure. He did call the next day and for several days succeeding — and then he sent a bill for his services to the mischie- vous lads who had thought thus to disconcert
that he should be the person memorial tied by the college,
son greatly appreciated this and gave assurances of aid from
family. This promise he generously kept and, as a further sigi
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the young instructor of the Maine Medical School.
Another very interesting character among the early members of the Bowdoin Faculty was Parker Cleaveland, son of a Revolutionary surgeon, who had been graduated from Har- vard " the best general scholar in his class." He came to Bowdoin to stay for the rest of his long and distinguished life. For fifty-three years he was " the genius of the place," min- eralogy being the subject of his special interest, though chemistry was the subject which he chiefly taught. For many years he gave popular lectures in the towns about the State, his ap- paratus, as he made these scientific excursions, being moved from place to place on a huge cart or sled drawn by a yoke of oxen.
In Professor Cleaveland's handwriting, on a carefully treasured programme for Bowdoin's Commencement in 1825, may be found this announcement :
"Oration: Native Writers,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
Portland."
Which brings us to the heyday of Bowdoin's history, the time when Franklin Pierce, later President of the United States, Jacob Abbott, Longfellow, and Nathaniel Hathorne (as the
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name was then spelled) were all studying to- gether under the Bowdoin pines. In the pref- . ace to " The Snow Image **, Hawthorne recalls the days at " a country college ", when the " two idle lads " (the book is dedicated to his classmate, Horatio Bridge) fished in the " shadowy httle stream wandering riverward through the forest *\ " shot gray squirrels *\ " picked blueberries in study hours "f or " watched the logs tumbling in the Andro- scoggin." Hawthorne was then as shy and as removed from the mass of men as he was in later years; he could not be persuaded to take part in the Commencement exercises — though he led his class as a writer — nor to join them in having their profiles cut in paper, the method then used for having class pictures taken. The man who came nearest to being Hawthorne's friend while in college was Pierce, who was in the class above him. To the relation then be- gun may be traced the Great Romancer's ap- pointment as consul at Liverpool made by Pierce when he became President.
Hawthorne began his first novel while at Bowdoin, but we have received from him no pictures of the daily life at this institution during these days of President Allen's adminis- tration. From the printed regulations we know, however, that students rose at six with the ringing of the bell, attended morning prayers
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immediately, and then went to the first recita- tion in a building deemed too cold by the Faculty to be used in winter for any exercise lasting more than fifteen minutes. Then came break- fast at commons, which probably did not take long, inasmuch as board for a day cost only a shilling at this period. At nine o'clock stu- dents retired to their rooms for study, and at eleven emerged for the midday recitation. After this, time was allotted for consulting the library, but " since no tinder-graduate could borrow books oftener than once in three weeks, and Freshmen were limited to one book at a time, this opportunity did not keep many away from dinner." In the afternoon came another study period and more recitations, then prayers; and after supper, until eight o'clock the students " recreated."
For the Vermont boy there was Middlebury College, which dates from 1800 and which has always been called a child of Yale for the rea- son that President Timothy Dwight helped greatly to get the institution started. Doctor Dwight visited the village of Middlebury for the first time in 1798, — just after the legisla- ture had granted a charter for the Addison County Grammar School. A building was even then being erected for this project, and Doctor Dwight urged strongly that, as no college was then in operation in Vermont and young men
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were forced, at great inconvenience, to travel a long way to get their higher education, this be developed into the nucleus of a college. " The local situation, the sober and religious charac- ter of the inhabitants, their manners and vari- ous other circumstances, contribute ", it was pointed out, " towards making Middlebury a very desirable seat for such a seminary." Rev- erend Jeremiah Atwater, a graduate of Yale and for several years tutor there, was, upon the recommendation of Doctor Dwight, made first president of the budding college, he and Tutor Joel Doolittle, of the Yale class of 1799, constituting the entire Faculty for the seven students who made up the first class.
Doctor Dwight made two visits to the col- lege in its early years, and after the second of these, in 1810, wrote: "It has continued to prosper, although its funds have been derived from private donations and chiefly, if not wholly, from the inhabitants of the town. The number of students is now one hundred and ten — probably as virtuous a collection of youths as can be found in any seminary in the world. The Faculty consists of a president, a professor of law, a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy, who teaches chemis- try, also, a professor of languages and two tutors. The inhabitants of Middlebury have lately subscribed $8,000 for the purpose of erect-
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ing another collegiate building.1 When it is remembered that twenty-five years ago this spot was a wilderness, it must be admitted that these efforts have done the authors of them the highest honor."
i The allusion here is probably to Fainter Hall, erected in 1814. and the home for a century now of Middlebury's most distinguished students. The oldest college building in Vermont, it is also one of the best existing examples of Colonial architecture of its class. Similarly beautiful is the chapel, erected in 1836, whose dome dominates the village landscape.
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CHAPTER III
CHOOSING A PROFESSION
DURING the seventeenth century the clergy were almost the only educated professional men in New England. Law- yers were few and were regarded with sus- picion for the reason that the clergy had set up the Mosaic code and thought its observance all that could possibly be desired. Though justice or an approximation thereto had been administered for centuries in the English courts, yet, under the theocracy which obtained in New England, there was almost no proper pro- tection, during the first hundred years of our history, for property, for life, or for liberty. So, since lawyers had no standing and trained physicians were to be found only here and there, to become a minister was obviously the line of least resistance.
The various colleges, as we have seen, were all strongly theological in their bent; and all maintained professors of Hebrew and other studies looking to preparation for the ministry.
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At Harvard the avowed object from the be- ginning had been the nurturing of a learned ministry. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that even so late as the middle of the eighteenth century the theological bias in this institution was undisturbed.
In the year of President John Adams's gradu- ation, 1755, every one of the twenty-four grad- uates discussed a theological subject at Com- mencement — save one. That one was John Adams, who had already determined to become a lawyer at any cost, and who chose a political topic for his Commencement part.
Nor did young ministers of the eighteenth century lack definite professional training for their work, even in the days before theological seminaries were established. It was customary for parsons of many years* experience to take into their families youths who had chosen the ministry for their career, with the result that several New England parsonages were vir- tually divinity schools. Harvard's own Di- vinity School, incorporated in 1826, graduated its first class in 1817. One member of this class was James Walker, " whose ethical genius made his presidency of Harvard one of the most noble of a long and honorable line." In the next class were John G. Palfrey, John Pierpont, and another president of Harvard, Jared Sparks.
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The lad whose tastes impelled him to the practice of medicine, on the other hand, was not obliged, in the early days, to take any col- lege or professional courses before setting out on his life-work. All he had to do was to get a kind of office-boy's place with some physician of standing, and after a season of reading his master's books, tending his master's horse, grinding his master's drugs, and mixing his mas- ter's plasters, be himself would become a dis- penser of " physick " that either killed or cured. Occasionally, to be sure, a properly certificated person arrived from England and announced his readiness to serve a community as physi- cian. Thus I find in the Boston News-Letter of February 25, 1725, the following " card ":
" These are to give notice to all persons that John Eliot, chirurgeon to his Excellency Gov. Phillip's Regiment, . . . prescribes Physick and undertakes all manner of Operations in Chyrurgery & is every year supplied with fresh Drugs from London, and will undertake any Persons Malady or Wound as reasonably as any can pretend to."
Presumably this " chirurgeon " found plenty to do, for men of his profession were exceed- ingly rare in the colonies thus early, ministers making it a part of their duty to give medical advice to those in need of such friendliness. As late as 1746, a Massachusetts town set aside
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five pounds for its minister in return for his serving the poor of the place with medicine, and Cotton Mather, President Hoar, President Rogers, and President Chauncey of Harvard College all practised medicine by virtue of the fact that they were professional curers of souls.
This combination of physic and piety ap- pealed strongly to the Puritan, and Cotton Mather's medical work, " The Angel of Be- thesda ", was written to encourage the alliance. This book, which is still only in manuscript, is particularly interesting for the light it sheds on the early opposition to inoculation. Ma- ther's friend, Doctor Zabdiel Boylston, was the first physician to inaugurate this great forward step in medicine by inoculating his own son, a child sis years old.
A very curious custom arose in connection with inoculation. People went visiting for the sake of taking the cure away from home, and frequently little groups of friends assembled at some one's house and underwent in company the trying gradations of the treatment. Be- fore this custom became fashionable, Cotton Mather had a kinsman at his house taking the cure, who was subjected to very rough treat- ment at the hands of those opposed to this newest thing in medicine:
" My Kinsman, the Minister of Roxbury ", writes the Boston divine, " being entertained
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at my House, that he might there undergo the Small-pox inoculated, and so Return to the Service of his Flock, which have the Contagion begun among them: Towards Three a clock in the Night, as it grew towards the Morning of this Day (November 14, 1721) some unknown Hands threw a fired Granado into the Cham- ber where my kinsman lay, and which uses to be my Lodging-Room. The Weight of the Iron Ball alone, had it fallen upon his Head, would have been enough to have done part of the Business designed. But the Granado was charged, the upper part with dried powder and what else I know not, in such manner that upon going off, it must have splitt, and have proba- bly killed the persons in the Room, and cer- tainly fired the Chamber, and speedily Laid the House in Ashes. But this Night there stood by me the angel of God whose I am and whom I serve; and the Merciful providence of my Saviour so ordered it, that the Granado pasing thro' the Window, had by the Iron in the mid- dle of the Casement, such a Turn given to it, that in falling on the Floor, the fired wild-fire in the Fuse was violently shaken out upon the Floor, without firing the Granado. When the Granado was taken up there was found a paper so tied with string about the fuse that it might out-five the breaking of the shell, — which had these words in it: — Cotton Mather, you
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Dog, Dam you: I'll enoculate you with this, with a pox to you."
The time had passed when the Mathers might do what they would in Boston. But is it not a curious commentary on the reliance which may be placed on contemporary public opinion to recall that when Cotton Mather persecuted people for witchcraft, every one called him blessed, and when he advocated a really great reform in medicine, there were none so poor to do him reverence.
As Cotton Mather was drawing to the end of his long life, there came to New England (in 1718) William Douglass, a Scotsman, who was then about twenty-seven years old and had been trained in medicine at Leyden and at Paris. He was one of those violently op- posed to inoculation, but he established himself as a physician and practised in Boston almost up to the time of his death in 1752. He is the author of a number of books, in one of which he expressed himself thus concerning the med- ical profession:
" In our plantations, a practitioner, bold, rash, impudent, a liar, basely born and edu- cated, has much the advantage of an honest, cautious, modest gentleman. In general the physical practice in our colonies is so per- niciously bad that excepting in surgery and some very acute cases, it i3 better to let nature
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under a proper regimen take her course, . . . than to trust to the honesty and sagacity of the practitioner. Our American practitioners are so rash and officious, the saying in . . . Ec- clesiasticus . . . may with much propriety be applied to them: 'He that sinneth before his Maker let him fall into the hand of the phy- sician.1 Frequently there is more danger from the physician than from the distemper. . . .
" But sometimes, notwithstanding the mal- practice, nature gets the better of the doctor, and the patient recovers. Our practitioners deal much in quackery and quackish medicines, as requiring no labor of thought or composition, and highly recommended in the London quack- bills — in which all the reading of many of our practitioners consists. When I first arrived in New England, I asked ... a noted facetious practitioner what was their general method of practice. He told me their practice was very uniform: bleeding, vomiting, blistering, pur- ging, anodyne, and so forth." *
And then, as an illustration of the amusing audacity of quacks in the English colonies, Doctor Douglass cites a medical advertisement in which, among other nostrums, the doctor announces " an elegant medicine to prevent the yellow fever and dry gripes in the West In- dies." This, Douglass thinks, is only to be
1 " Summary ," II. 361-352.
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equalled by a similar advertisement published in Jamaica immediately after an earthquake had done great destruction there. The physi- cian offered to the public " pills to prevent persons or their effects suffering by earth- quakes." Physicians were not the only people attacked by this author, however, so we must take his caustic statements with several grains of salt. Good men and true were then, as now, to be found in this calling, and the profession of the physician was often hereditary — just as we have seen that of the preacher to be in the case of the Mathers and many another New Eng- land family. Doctor Benjamin Gott, who was a physician of some prominence in Massachu- setts in the middle of the eighteenth century, was one of the three sons of John Gott of Wen- ham, all of whom were destined for the " art and mysteries " of the doctor. The youngest of the three, Benjamin, was indentured to Doctor Samuel Wallis of Ipswich when about fourteen, and as his father died in 1732, before the term of apprenticeship had expired, his two elder brothers were charged in the will " to find him [Benjamin] with good and suffi- cient clothing during the time he is to live with Dr. Wallis as may appear by his indenture, and to pay him £300 in silver money or in good bills of credit when he arrives at the age of twenty-one years."
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In due time Benjamin completed his student term, married the daughter of Reverend Robert Breck of Marlboro, and was himself in a po- sition to take in his brother-in-law as an ap- prentice. Thus when Reverend Mr. Breck died, on January 6, 1731, he bequeathed to Doctor Gott " two acres of land as recompense for instructing my son Robert in the rules of physic." This Robert Breck, Junior, however, appears to have educated himself in medicine only for the sake of using his skill while pur- suing the profession of a preacher. Many a minister followed this practice, Cotton Mather among others. But a younger brother of Robert Breck studied medicine and became a practicing physician of Worcester in 1748; Doctor Gott's oldest son, Benjamin, also became a physician and practiced in Brookfield; while Anna Gott, a daughter of the first Doctor Benjamin, married Doctor Samuel Brigham, a physician of Marl- boro, and their son, Samuel Brigham, practiced medicine in Boylston. That " doctoring " ran in this family seems sufficiently established.
Doctor Benjamin Gott, the first, took into his office, on January 8, 1738 or 1784, a young man named Hollister Baker, then about sixteen, who was to stay with him until he should come of age. Baker's original indenture is very in- teresting for the light it throws on medical edu- cation in the year 1734. It runs as follows:
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THIS INDENTURE WITNESSETH, That Hol- lister Baker a minor aged about sixteen son of Mr. Eben' Baker late of Marlborough in the County of Middlesex Gent. Deceased of his own free will and accord, and with the Consent of Benj" Wood of Marlborough in ye County aforesaid his Guardian doth Put and Bind himself to be an Apprentice unto Benj* Gott of Marlboro in ye County afore- said Physcician to learn his Art, Trade or Mystery, and with him the said Benj* Gott after the manner of an Apprentice, to Dwell and Serve from the Day of the Date hereof, for and during the full and just Term of five Years and four months next ensuing, and fully to be compleat and ended. During all which said Term, the said Apprentice his said Mas- ter and Mistress honestly and faithfully shall Serve, so long as his Master lives of said Term, their Se- crets keep Close their lawful and reasonable Com- mands every where gladly Do and Perform; Dam- age to his said Master and Mistress he shall not wilfully Do, his Masters Goods he shall not Waste, Embezel, Purloine or Lend unto others, nor suffer the same to be wasted or purloined; but to his power shall forthwith Discover, and make known the same unto his said Master and Mistress. Tav- erns and Alehouses he shall not frequent; at Cards, Dice or any other unlawful Game he shall not Play; Fornication he shall not Commit nor Matrimony Contract with any Person, during said Term : From his Masters Service he shall not at any time unlawfully Absent himself But in all things as a good, honest and faithful Servant and Apprentice,
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shall bear and behave himself towards bis said Master and Mistress during the full Term of five Years and four months Commencing as aforesaid.
AND THE SAID Benj' Gott for himself Doth Covenant Promise, Grant and Agree unto, and with him said Apprentice in Manner and Form follow- ing, THAT IS TO SAY, That he will teach the said Apprentice or cause him to be Taught by the best Ways and Means that he may or can, the Trade, Art or Mystery of a Physician according to his own best skil and judgm't (if said Apprentice be capable to learn) and will Find and Provide for unto said Apprentice, good and sufficient meat Drink washing and lodging During said Term both in sickness and in health — his Mother all said Term finding said apprentice all his Cloathing of all sorts fitting for an Apprentice during said Term; and at the End of said Term, to dismiss said Apprentice with Good skill in arithmetick Lattin and also in the Greek through the Greek Grammar.
IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, The said Parties to these present Indentures have interchangeably set their Hands and Seals, in the Eighth Day of January — In the seventh Year of the Reign of Our Sovereign Lord George ye second by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland; And in the Year of Our Lord, One Thousand Seven Hundred and thirty three four —
Signed, Sealed and Delivered
in Presence of Holuster Bakes
John Mead Benj* Wood
Elizabeth Woods Benj* Gott
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This agreement makes it clear that five years and four months spent in doing chores, both household and professional, was Hollister Ba- ker's payment to Doctor Gott for his medical instruction — as it was also the medical course of the apprentice. This was the custom of the day; Doctor Gott had served Doctor Wallis in the same way, and youths so continued to serve even after the first medical school on the continent, that of Philadelphia, had been founded in 1765.
Horace Davis, to whom we are indebted for these facts about the Gott family, has enter- tainingly pictured 1 the life which young Baker may have lived while fulfilling the terms of his apprenticeship. In so small a town as Marl- boro, Mr. Davis conjectures, there would probably have been no drug-shop, so that in one of the little front rooms of the doctor's house some small store would doubtless have been kept of such things as opium, antimony, Peruvian bark, mercury, nitre, sulphur, and ipecac, as well as of the reliable native reme- dies, elder, yellow dock, slippery elm, snake- root, saffron, and the rest. " Among these emblems of his future calling, Baker," he thinks, " very likely passed a good share of his time.
" He would come down from his plain quarters
" Transactions Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vol. XII.
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in the attic early in the morning and start the fire while Mrs. Gott attended to the children; then he would go out and look after the Doctor's horse. Before breakfast would come family prayers, when, according to tradition, the Doctor used to read from his Latin Bible. After break- fast he would saddle the Doctor's horse and bring him round to the front door, when his master would throw the saddle-bags over his back, stuffed with such medicines or instru- ments as the morning's work required, and ride away to his patients. Then perhaps Hollister would sit down to his ' arithmetick, Lattin, and Greek Grammar ', possibly dipping into some of the medical books which adorned the Doctor's shelves.
" After the midday dinner, perhaps the Doc- tor would take his apprentice with him to visit some patient in the village or send him on the old mare with remedies to some distant invalid, whom his master was unable to attend in per- son. And when the day's work was done the Doctor would look after the boy's studies and impart to him some knowledge of that ' art, trade and mystery * which the boy was anxious to grasp. If the Doctor was kind and his mis- tress gentle, the lad's life might be very pleasant. . . . But it is certainly a far cry from the splendors of modern medical education to this solitary boy serving his master and mistress
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under a five year indenture for his board, lodging and tuition."
This particular doctor appears to have been very kind, it his funeral notice, published in the Boston News-Letter of August 1, 1751, may be trusted:
" Marlborough, July 27, 1751. On the 25th deceased, and this Day decently interr'd, Dr. Benjamin Gott, a learned and useful Physician and Surgeon: ' the Loss of this Gentleman is the more bewail'd in these Parts, as he was not only a Lover of Learning and learned Men, and very hospitable and generous; but as he was peculiarly faithful to his Patients, moderate in his Demands, and charitable to the Poor; a Character very imitable by all in the Faculty; and was taken off in the very Meridian of Life, being but in the 46th Year of his Age."
The career of another typical old-time physician has been sketched by Mrs. Harriette M. Forbes in her " Hundredth Town." The original of the picture is Doctor Ball of North- borough, Massachusetts, whose procedure on visiting the sick was usually as follows: " First he bled the arm, then gave a severe emetic,
1 The excellent Doctor Gott, having acquired his profession by means of apprenticeship, was, of course, not really entitled to be called doctor. Even graduates in medicine were from 1768 to 1701 "to content themselves with the decree M. B., Bachelor of re necessary , at Phila- !y to be entitled to be i, M. D. was the only
Medicine. Three years of further study were necessary, at Phila- delphia, prior to 1792. if a man wished really to be entitled to be called Doctor of Medicine. From 1792 on, M. D. was the only
degree given.
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followed by doses of calomel and jalap. In his ' Resipee Book ' was to be found the following ' Receipt to the Scratches *, ' one qrt fishworms washed clean, one pound hog's lard stewed to- gether, filtered through a strainer & add half- pint oil turpentine, half pint good brandy sim- mer it well & is fit for use/ . . . His directions to his patients were usually given in about the same formula, and have a suggestion of con- stant use of the gun, as well as plenty of shot. He would say: ' Take a little of this ere and a little of that air, put it in a jug before the fire, stir it up with your little finger, and take it when you are warm, hot, cold, or feverish.* "
Doctor Ball was a strong believer in the mind as a help or hindrance to recovery, as in his youth, he had been made almost ill by being told that the perfectly good beef on which he was dining was horse-meat.
" Not long after this," he tells us, " I at- tended a Patient a yong man about 18 or 19 years old, in another town, sick with the scar- let-fever and throat distemper (Scarlatina Angi- nosa). I revisited him on Sunday morning. I told him he was better, his disorder had turned, he was going well. I saw nothing butt that he might recover soon. I had business further along, and on my return, about sunset, I called again and beheld the family and neighbors ware standing around in a large room, seeing the
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patient die. I spoke to his mother, and asked her what was the matter. 0 said she Joel is worse. I then turned to my Pupil and sayes what can this mean. He said I dont know. I am shure he says he was going well when we were here in the morning.
" I then turned again to his mother and asked her what had taken place. O, she said, Joel has been growing worse ever since you left in the morning, she said the Minister called soon after I left, and he said he might live till night, but could not probably live till tomorrow morning, and she thought it her duty to let her son know the near approach of death. I went to the bed-side and I veriyly thought him to be a dicing, he had a deathly pult (subsutus tendinum) spasmodick affection of the face and jaws, indeede the whole system was gen- erally convulsed. I thought of the horse-beefe. I sayes to him Joel, I guess I can give you some- thing that will help you. I perceived he had his senses, but I beleave he could not speak." He could swallow however, and when plied with cordial and with hope by the old doctor, was quickly pulled back from what had bidden fair to be a death from fright.
Newport, Rhode Island, was the cradle of the first medical course in the country, and many celebrated physicians and surgeons lived and practiced within the boundaries of the old
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town. Newport was, indeed, founded by a physician named John Clarke, who united with Roger Williams in obtaining from Charles II a charter conferring greater civil and re- ligious privileges than had been granted to any other province. William Hunter and Thomas Moffat, both graduates of the famous Edin- burgh University of Medicine, came to New- port about 1750, and there, during 1754, 1755, and 1756, Doctor Hunter gave the first course of medical lectures ever delivered in America, Many youths came from the other colonies to profit by these lectures and, had not the dis- turbances of the Revolution broken up the school, Rhode Island would have attained great distinction at an early date as a source of medi- cal instruction. Doctor Hunter had the largest medical library in New England, a portion of which was given by his son, the Honorable William Hunter, to Brown University. An- other early Newport physician was Doctor Vigneron, who reached the province about 1690, lived to be ninety-five, and was the father of so large a family that it was often laughingly said of him that he peopled the town. William Vi- gneron Taylor, one of his descendants, was a lieutenant on Oliver Hazard Perry's ship at the battle of Lake Erie. The father of Cap- tain Perry's wife, Doctor Benjamin Mason, also studied medicine in Europe and was a promi-
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nent member of the profession in Rhode Is- land.
Newport is justly proud of its progressive spirit in matters relating to health. Doctor Waterhouse has pointed out that while Boston was pelting Doctor Boylston with stones as he passed in the streets and breaking his win- dows for introducing inoculation for smallpox, Rhode Island was inoculating patients without opposition and getting ready to set up (in 1798) what was then a very great novelty, a Board of Health. The example of Newport in this mat- ter of legislating for health was not followed in any other locality for many years.
Windsor, Connecticut, had several early phy- sicians of great skill and reputation, among them Doctor Alexander Wolcott, son of Gov- ernor Roger Wolcott and great-grandson of Mr. Henry Wolcott, the Pilgrim. Doctor Wolcott was graduated from Yale College in 1731 and studied medicine under Doctor Norman Morri- son of Hartford. At Louisburg and during the Revolutionary War, Doctor Wolcott contributed notably to the success of the patriot cause.
Not so did Doctor Elihu Tudor of this same town. Doctor Tudor was graduated from Yale in 1750, studied medicine under Doctor Benja- min Gale of Killingsworth, and became an ex- cellent and a successful physician. It did not help his practice in Windsor that at the out-
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break of the Revolution be was gravely sus- pected of being favorable to the British gov- ernment. It was related of him that he used to have two teapots, one of which was filled with sage tea and the other with real tea — which could be used according to the company he had at his table. By virtue of his service during the French and Indian War, he became a pen- sioner of the British government; but when 1825 dawned, and he was still living and draw- ing his annuity, — being then over ninety years old, — an agent of the mother country was sent over to see " whether the old cuss was really alive." ' Doctor Tudor was in his day the best surgeon in New England, in recognition of which Dartmouth College, despite his politics, conferred upon him, in 1790, the degree of Doctor of Medicine.
Windsor can boast, also, of a doctor who had been a slave, one Primus, who as the body- servant of Doctor Wolcott had assisted for so many years in the preparation of medicines that he felt quite competent, when given his freedom, to practice by himself the " art and mystery " of a physician. On one occasion, being sent for to visit a sick child in West Windsor, he obeyed the summons and on his way home rapped at the door of his old master. When Doctor Wolcott came to see what was
1 Stiles' " History of Windsor, Connecticut."
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wanted, the negro said: " I just called to say that that is a very simple case over there, and that I told the child's mother she need not have sent so far for a doctor — that you would have done just as well as any one else."
Connecticut physicians seem to have at- tained considerable esprit de corps by the end of the eighteenth century. In the Connecticut Courant of 1784, I find, under date of July 13, a notice to the effect that a meeting of their body will be held on August 2 at the house of Mr. David Buel, Litchfield. Possibly this meeting was called to cope with such abuses as must have followed this advertisement, to be found in the same paper some four years earlier:
" Just Published " And to be sold by the Printers hereof " A new edition, neatly bound of Domestic Medicine: Or the Family Physician: Being an Attempt to render the Medical Art more gen- erally useful by showing people what is in their own Power, both with respect to the Pre- vention and Cure of Diseases. . . . "
A very distinguished Boston physician at the time of the Revolution was Doctor James Lloyd, who was born March 14, 1728, and died in 1810. He was a close friend of Sir Will-
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iam Howe and of Earl Percy, the latter living for a time, while in Boston, at his house. In religion Doctor Lloyd was an Episcopalian, — one of those who protested vigorously against the alteration of the liturgy at King's Chapel. But though the American government knew him to be a Tory, he was never molested, and for many years after the Revolution continued to be one of Boston's most popular physicians. One of the most high-priced, also! For he charged the exorbitant fee of half a dollar a visit, where most of the city doctors were glad to come as often as they were called for a shil- ling and sixpence. Anna Green Winslow speaks in her diary of his " bringing little master to town " in 1771 ; for this service his charge would have been a guinea, inasmuch as he was a specialist in " baby cases."
Most of the early physicians were shockingly underpaid.1 In Hadley and in Northampton, Massachusetts, they received but sixpence a visit in 1730, and their fee had risen no higher than eightpence by Revolutionary days. A blood-letting or the extraction of a tooth by the agonizing method then in. vogue cost the
1 1n Boston, prior to 1782, the regular doctor's foe wbb from one shilling sixpence., to two shillings, the latter charge being made only to " such as were in high life. Later a club of leading physicians fixed the common fee at fifty cents, permitting one dollar to be charged for a visit made in consultation, double rates for night calls, and a fee of six dollars for midwifery. See Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings for 1863.
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sufferer etghtpence extra. The medicines given by these early doctors were exceedingly power- ful and were likely to contain a great deal of mercury. Hence the very early decay of the teeth, a universal complaint which made possi- ble such an advertisement as the following in the Boston Evening Post of September 36, 1768:
" Whereas many Persons are so unfortunate as to lose their Fore Teeth by Accident or Otherways to their great Detriment not only in looks but in speaking both in public and private. This is to inform all such that they can have them replaced with Artificial Ones that look as well as the Natural and answer the End of Speaking by Paul Revere Goldsmith near the head of Dr. Clarkes wharf. All Per- sons who have had false Teeth Fixed by Mr. Jos. Baker Surgeon Dentist and They have got loose as they will in Time may have them fastened by above said Revere who lernt the method of fixing them from Mr. Baker."
The teeth in which Paul Revere dealt were frankly artificial ; his advertisement is not nearly so gruesome, therefore, as this from the Connecticut Courant of August 17, 1795: "A generous price paid for Human Front Teeth perfectly sound, by Dr. Skinner." Appar- ently this " doctor " did not shrink, when duty called, from the very disagreeable task of " in- grafting " teeth, a practice then much in vogue,
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by which " live teeth " were inserted in the mouths of those able to pay for them, — and willing to wear them.
None of the professions was quite so slow in becoming standardized as that of the physician. That practitioners of medicine were not uni- versally recognized as professional men, even as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, is clear from the ranking given in the college catalogues to doctors' sons. Thus Clement Sumner, son of a reputable physician, is placed number thirty in the Yale College catalogue of 1788; this, too, where there were only forty- three students in the whole class. The truth is that a very large number of quack doctors were abroad in the land, and no simple method had yet been found of distinguishing good men from charlatans. In the Old Farmer's Al- manack for 1806, we find Mr. Thomas writing: " There are a great many asses without long ears. Quack, Quack, went the ducks, as Doc- tor Motherwort rode by with his saddle-bags stuffed with maiden-hair and golden-rod. Don't let your wife send Tommy to the academy sis weeks and make a novice of him."
And in the 1813 issue of this same famous publication, there is a drastic description of " the famous Dr. Dolt ": "A larnt man is the doctor. Once he was a simple knight of the lapstone and pegging awl; but now he is blaz-
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oned in the first orders of quack heraldry. The mighty cures of the doctor are known far round. He is always sure to kill the disorder, although in effecting this he sometimes kills the patient."
Against lawyers the useful Mr. Thomas also inveighed; and there was need of it. For in many country towns there was a perfect pest of men who battened on the quarrelsomeness of their neighbors. John Adams, in 1760, speaks of " the multiplicity of pettifoggers " in Brain- tree, a town which had become proverbial for litigation, and specifies one *' Captain H." who, he says, " has given out that he is a sworn attorney till nine-tenths of this town really believe it." Henry Wansey, who traveled through New England in 1794, wrote that " the best houses in Connecticut are inhabited by lawyers." Verily a great change had come about since the days when Thomas Lechford found it so hard to practice his profession in Boston that he was constrained to warn the colonists not to " despise learning, nor the worthy lawyers of either gown (civil or eccle- siastical) lest you repent too late." *
Driven from England for engaging in the trial of the great Prynne, Lechford arrived in Boston in 1688 and began to keep that " Note- Book " by means of which many facts of great
1 " Plaine Dealing," 1642, p. 28.
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value have been added to our knowledge of old New England. But he soon became a persona non grata in the colonies. It was the policy of the clergy to suppress the study of law l in order that their own importance and power should in no way be curtailed. A civil magistrate was thought to need no special training in order to perform his duty properly, and a judge was expected to take his law from those who expounded the Word of God. Stough- ton, the first chief justice in Massachusetts, who was appointed by Phips, probably at the instigation of Increase Mather, had been bred for the church and had absolutely no training in law. And Sewall, as we know, was much more a minister and a merchant than a lawyer. Naturally, there was no place in such a social scheme for lawyers and law-students.
Yet in 1725 Jeremiah Gridley graduated from Harvard, and he, as Brooks Adams points out,8 may be fairly said to have been the pro- genitor of a famous race. For " long before the Revolution, men like Prat, Otis and John Adams could well have held their own before any court of Common Law that ever sat."
No longer now must accused persons be condemned, as were the witches, undefended by those skilled in argument and in the presen-
1 Connecticut, in 1730, limited to eleven the number of lawyers for that whole colony.
3 la " The Emancipation of Massachusetts."
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tation of a case. When, at the time of the Boston Massacre, Captain Preston and his men were indicted for murder, John Adams and Josiah Quincy, though heart and soul de- voted to the cause of the people, unhesitatingly accepted their defense, with the result that, in spite of popular sentiment against them, Pres- ton and his men were patiently tried according to the law and the evidence. All that skill, learning, and courage could do for them was done and an impartial court brought in a ver- dict of Not Guilty. The law as a profession during this trial came into its own.
Next to the three learned professions should come that of the teacher; but this vocation was not at all highly regarded, if we may judge from the rank assigned to schoolmasters' sons in the college catalogues of early days. Henry Rust, son of a schoolmaster in Ipswich, Massa- chusetts, stands last in the class of 1707 at Har- vard! Of school-teaching, as of doctoring, it was true at this time that the profession had not become standardized.
Inn-keeping, on the contrary, was a most respectable occupation. In several of the early college catalogues sons of innkeepers may be found taking precedence of ministers' sons! This was because an innkeeper had to be as moral as a minister and possess property be- sides. What was required of a landlord in
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those early days is shown by the bond of Colonel Thomas Howe, who kept a public house in Marlborough in 1696. This instrument stipu- lates that " he shall not suffer to have any playing at cards, dice, tally, bowls, ninepins, billiards, or any other unlawful game or games in bis said house, or yard or gardens or back- side, nor shall suffer to remain in his house any person or persons, not being his own family, on Saturday night after dark, or on the Sab- bath days, or during the time of God's Public Worship; nor shall he entertain as lodgers in his house any strangers men or women, above the space of forty-eight hours, but such whose names and surnames he shall deliver to one of the selectmen or constables of the town, unless they shall be such as he very well know- eth, and will ensure for his or their forthcoming — nor shall sell any wine to the Indians or ne- groes, nor suffer any children or servant, or other person to remain in his house, tippling or drinking after nine o'clock in the night — nor shall buy or take to preserve any stolen goods, nor willingly or knowingly harbor in his house, barn, stable or otherwhere, any rogues, vagabonds, thieves, sturdy beggars, masterless men and women, or other notori- ous offenders whatsoever — nor shall any per- son or persons whatsoever, sell or utter any wine, beer, ale, cider, rum, brandy, or other
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liquors by defaulting or by color of his license — nor shall entertain any person or persons to whom he shall be prohibited by law, or by any one of the magistrates of the county, as per- sons of jolly conversation or given to tippling."
Thus it will be seen that tavern-keepers of the early days were, of necessity, persons of conscience and quality. Nearly all of them had a military title, and that in a day when titles meant something. The yeoman in old New England was called " goodman ", and his spouse was a " goodwife." The great majority of the colonists were addressed as " Goodman ", only one freeman in fourteen, in the Massa- chusetts of 1649, having the title of " Mr.", which originally meant that the person thus designated was a college graduate. The wife and daughter of a Master of Arts, or a Mr., be- came Mistress or "Mrs." Not until after 1720 was " Miss " used to indicate any young female.
The Revolution necessarily did away with finely drawn class distinctions. Such social classifications as the old regime fostered were bound to break down when a Franklin was the son of a tallow-chandler. The distinc- tion of the " gentleman " was charily recog- nized now; that John Adams used the term oc- casionally after the Revolution has been made a matter of repeated comment.
Printing, which led then as it often does to-
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day to journalism and allied activities, attracted some of the brightest minds. How Franklin chose this for his profession we have all read in the " Autobiography "; in his case adopting the trade of a printer ended by his becoming a favor- ite at the Court of France. Robert Bailey Thomas was another bright New England boy who became a printer; he was taught penman- ship by Doctor T. Allen of Spencer, Massachu- setts, who had the reputation of " writing the most beautiful copy hand of any person in the country." He progressed through school- mastering and the pursuit of mathematics to the business of bookbinding and publishing, of which, as we know, he made an enormous success. From the first issue of his Farmer's Almanack in 1793, Thomas was a bookseller too, as well as a publisher, dispensing quite an astonishing variety of books from liis little shop in Spencer. Booksellers abounded in the country towns; and what is more, in the last part of the eighteenth century and the be- ginning of the nineteenth, there were local presses without number, and cheap copies of standard English authors were frequently re- printed in places like Exeter, Brattleboro, Newburyport, Salem, and New Bedford.
With so many almanacs abroad in the land, " astrologers " were necessarily in considerable demand. Mr. Thomas kept his Almanac free
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from astrology, but most earlier almanac- makers were less scrupulous, and many a man with more cleverness than conscience battened through this medium on the credibility of the reading public. In the diary of President Stiles of Yale College, there is a casual refer- ence to one of these men when, under date of June 13, 1773, he mentions, as lately dead, " Mr. Stafford of Tiverton ", who " was wont to tell where lost things might be found, and what day, hour, and minute was fortunate for vessels to sail."
When a youth wanted to be an artist, he was discouraged violently. William Kheeland, Harvard tutor, wrote Governor Trumbull about his son: " I find he has a natural genius and disposition for limning. As a knowledge of that art will probably be of no use to him I submit to your consideration whether it would not be best to give him a turn to the study of perspective, a branch of mathematics the knowl- edge of which will at least be a genteel accom- plishment."
The fanner's son adopted, quite naturally, the work of his father. And the same thing was frequently true of the sons of men in the various trades. Benjamin Franklin had hard work to avoid becoming a tallow-chandler — like his father. Blacksmiths were long in great demand, and special inducements were often
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held out to young men to adopt this calling. For blacksmiths made nails as well as shod horses. " Nailer Tom ", as Thomas B. Hazard, who lived in Peace Dale, Rhode Island, the latter part of the eighteenth century, was called — to distinguish him from the various other Tom Hazards of his time — was an ex< ceedingly interesting character.
The term of an apprentice in these and allied trades was generally for seven years. From the indenture of an apprentice to whom Samuel Williams and wife of Roxbury en- gaged, about 1678, to teach the "art, trade, mistry and science " of shoemaking, we read, after the enumeration of conditions almost identical with those required of the lad who was learning to be a doctor : " and at the end of six years they will give their said apprentice doubell apparell, one suit for the Lord's day and one suit for the working days neet an comely for one of his degree and calling."
In the seaboard towns the trade of " mar- riner " was naturally of strong appeal. The apprentice term in this calling was four years, and the wages of seamen were unusually good. A captain ordinarily got about six pounds a month, the chief mate four pounds, and the men from £l 15s. to £2 15s. a month. No wonder lads ran away to sea, when they could have adventure and such alluring wages as
r
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this at the end of four years, while a gold- smith's apprentice, in 1644, had to promise to serve twelve years for meat, drink, and ap- parel only, and receive at the end of his term . the meager sum of three pounds.1
One interesting New England industry, which disappeared when the coming of the railroad brought western competition to our doors, was the raising of " stall-fed oxen " for the city market. No beef brought higher prices on the foot than that driven from the barn- yards of old Deerfield Street, and the passing of this business and of the farm boy who lived by it makes a very interesting story s as told by Deerfield's historian, George Sheldon. In early days it was an unheard-of thing for oxen to be " sent to market " which had not been through a course of stall-feeding in some of the valley towns. Stall-feeding grew to be an exact science; the whole winter was " de- voted " — and Mr. Sheldon insists that he uses this word advisedly — to the care of the stock, which had been acquired in the fall at one of the hill towns on the west or north. " Nothing was allowed to interfere with the regular program of the day. For it was a cardinal doctrine of the feeders that the more comfortable and happy the animals were made
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the better the results." Naturally this gave the farm boy plenty to do. For, after the oxen had been carefully mated, their quarters had to be kept scrupulously clean, and feed, drink, air, and exercise had to be provided for them with undeviating regularity.
The great moment for the farm boy came, however, with the Monday morning journey to Brighton. Often this spring expedition Boston-wards was the country lad's first ven- ture into the outside world, and, though he got little or no pay beyond his expenses on the road as he helped drive the cattle to their fate, there was great eagerness to obtain this peep into the great beyond. Tearful mothers, as well as envious young brothers, hung out of the windows as the lads and their charges set forth from home under the care of an experi- enced drover, with their baggage stowed away in leather portmanteaus, strapped behind the horns of some of the leaders of the drove, where it was safe from molestation. " Wonderful were the stories with which the travelers re- galed the ears of their envious companions on their return in state by stage coach. These narratives generally bore fruit the next spring in new batches of pilgrims; and, incidentally, these trips to the city often led to ambitious aspirations, to permanent migrations — and a resultant loss to the valley."
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CHAPTER IV
" 'tending meetin' "
THERE might, or might not be, a school- house in the early New England villages. But a meeting-house there was almost certain to be. Scarcely had the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, when it was decided that wor- ship should be held in their " timber fort both strong and comely, with flat roof and battle- ments." To this fort every Sunday the men and women made their way, three in a row, until they built their first " meeting-house " in 1648. They were very particular about calling it a meeting-house, too, and so, I sup- pose, must we be. Cotton Mather has defended the stand they took in this matter by declaring that he " found no just ground in Scripture to apply such a trope as church to a house for public assembly "; and he opposed as vigor- ously the tendency to call after the name of the congregation who worshipped in the meeting- house the meeting-house in which they wor- shipped, as he did the even more insidious in- clination to call the Sabbath Sunday.
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In 1675 it was enacted that a meeting-house should be erected in every town in the colony; in most places, as in Plymouth, these first houses for the worship of God were very rude affairs. And very tiny, too! The first meeting- house in Dedham was thirty-six feet long, twenty feet wide, and twelve feet high " in the stud"; the one in Medford was smaller still, while Haverhill had an edifice only twenty- six feet long and twenty feet wide.
The " Old Ship " at Hingham, built in 1681, represents the best example still in existence of the second form or type of American church architecture; square meeting-houses of this kind soon abounded in New England. The third type, and that to which we all cling most lovingly, is exemplified in the Old South Church of Boston. Many similar structures, though built of wood instead of brick, crown our New England hilltops to this day.
The reason why the meeting-house was so often built on a hill was because it was highly valued as a guide for travelers making their way through the woods and, in seacoast towns, as a mark for sailors. It was also used as a m watch-house, from which the approach of hos- tile Indians could be discerned. The danger of Sunday attacks from the Indians was a very real one in the seventeenth century. The church in York, Maine, found it necessary,
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indeed, to retain until 1746 the custom of car- rying arms to the meeting-house, to guard against raids from the Indians all about them.
No better description of " publique worship " in a large town in the very early days of the colony can be found than that given us by Thomas Lechford, the first Boston lawyer, in his " Plaine dealing or Newes from New-Eng- land."
" Every Sabbath or Lord's Day they come together at Boston by wringing of a bell, about nine of the clock or before. The Pastor begins with solemn prayer continuing about a quarter of an hour. The Teacher then readeth and ex- poundeth a chapter; Then a Psalme is sung whichever one the ruling Elder dictates. After that the Pastor preacheth a Sermon, and some- times extempore exhorts. Then the Teacher continues with a prayer and a blessing. About two in the afternoone they repair to the meet- ing-house againe; and the pastor begins, as before noone, and a Psalm being sung, the Teacher makes a Sermon. He was wont, when I came first, to reade and expound a Chapter also before his Sermon in the afternoon. After and before his Sermon he prayed. After that^ ensueth Baptisme, if there be any, which is done by either Pastor or Teacher, in the Dea- con's seate, the most eminent place in the Church, next under the Elders seate. The
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Pastor most commonly makes a speech or ex- hortation to the Church and parents concern- ing Baptisme, and then prayeth before and after. It is done by washing or sprinkling. One of the parents being of the church the child may be baptized. . . . No sureties are re- quired.
" Which ended follows the contribution, one of the Deacons saying Brethren of the congre- gation, now there is time left for contribution, wherefore as God hath prospered you so freely offer. Upon some extraordinary occasions, as building and repairing of Churches and meet- ing-houses or other necessities, the Ministers presse a liberall contribution, with effectual exhortations out of Scripture. The Magis- trates, and chiefe gentlemen first, and then the Elders, and all the congregation of men, and most of them that are not of the Church, all single persons, widows, and women in the absence of their husbands come up one after another one way, and bring their offerings to the Deacon at his seate, and put it into a box of wood for the purpose, if it be money or pa- pers; if it be any other chattle, they set it or lay it downe before the deacons, and so passe another way to their seats again."
The external aspect of a typical country meeting-house of the third type is still familiar to us, for there are many survivals in the New
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England of to-day. Occasionally, too, there may be found a structure in which the large square pews, the high pulpit with sounding- board above it and deacon's seat below (con- veniently near the adjustable shelf which served for a communion table) have not yet given place to modern equipment. The choir in such a meeting-house was seated in the middle gal- lery, and over the singers there ruled, in days of yore, a chorister who " set the tune " for the different parts by the aid of a wooden pitch- pipe. This pitch-pipe remained in use until the tuning-fork was invented. Then came successively a bassoon in the church and a bass-viol in the meeting-house, until organs supplanted both.
A considerable number of years, however, is covered in this very brief summary of the history of church music in New England. For though " the first organ that ever pealed to the glory of God in this country " was imported from London in 1713 by Mr. Thomas Brattle, one of the founders of the old Brattle Street Church in Boston, organs did not come into general use until a much later day. One rea- son for this lay in the fact that few people could play this instrument. The Brattle organ, left at the death of its donor to the Brattle Street Church, " if they shall accept thereof and within a year after my decease procure a sober
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person that can play skilfully thereon with a loud noise ", became the property of King's Chapel, because this condition of a skilful player was not duly met.
Only after a long struggle was it conceded that organ music was not sacrilegious. The Scotch had called the organ a " kist of whistles ", and the Puritan named this instrument the " devil's bagpipes." The use of organs had been sternly prohibited during the Puritan reign in Eng- land, and it is not at all surprising, therefore, that Cotton Mather should have queried, in his " Magnalia", whether " such music may be lawfully introduced in the worship of God in the churches of the New World." He could find no New Testament authority, he declared, for countenancing the organ, and he added: " If we admit instrumental music in the wor- ship of God how can we resist the imposition of all the instruments used among the ancient JewsP Yea, dancing as well as playing I "
In this matter of condemning church organs, if in no other, Cotton Mather and that stanch Baptist, Nicholas Brown, would have found themselves in heartiest agreement. There is preserved in the John Carter Brown Library a copy of an invitation sent out by King's Church, Providence, on the occasion of the installation of its new organ, and on this broad- side, below the printed quotation, " Praise
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him with organs ", may be found, written in Mr. Brown's hand: " Praise him with dancing and the Stringed Instruments." This Episco- pal organ was the second in Providence — the Providence Congregational Church had ac- quired one the previous year — and Mr. Brown evidently felt that the time had come to " take a stand." Doctor Stiles records with obvious pride that the Congregational instrument pos- sessed two hundred pipes and was the " first organ in a dissenting Chh. in America except Jersey [Princeton] College. . . . Mr. West has exercised himself upon it a month in learning to play." To the service in which the Episco- pal organ was " play'd on by Mr. Flagg ", Stiles alludes as the " Consecration of the Organ ", adding: " This organ was taken from the Concert-Hall in Boston — from being em- ployed in promoting Festivity, Merriment, Ef- feminacy, Luxury, and Midnight Revellings — to be used in the Worship of God."
When the violoncello, which the organ seemed bound to displace, had been introduced into New England, precisely the same objections had been raised as were now used against the introduction of the organ. They were the first musical instruments allowed in our churches, and there is a story that when one of them was twanged for the first time in the first Baptist Church at Providence, a mother in Israel
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swung open her pew door, caught up her petti- coat between thumb and finger, and capered down the aisle, chanting rhythmically:
" If they are a-goin' to fiddle I am a-goin* to dance! "
The organ, whose music is really churchly and reverent, soon made its way in spite of opposition. And whereas, in 1730, the Harvard Commencement thesis: " Do organs excite a devotional spirit in divine worship ? " was answered in the negative, by 1762 the question: " Does music promote salvation? " won an en- thusiastic affirmative in this same high quarter. And by music was meant organ music. It had by this time been discovered that the organ helped enormously in the singing of the Psalms, long a highly important feature of New England worship.
The very first book printed in New England had been the " Bay Psalm Book ", now the rarest of all Americana, and, in some ways, the most interesting. Richard Mather, Thomas Welde, and John Eliot had collaborated in the text of this volume, and President Dunster of Harvard College had promptly put their verses into type upon a " printery " which cost fifty pounds and had been the gift of friends in Hol- land to the new community in 1638.
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Cotton Mather, in his " Magnalia," relates with evident appreciation the history of this epoch-making book:
" About the year 1639, the New-English re- formers, considering that their churches enjoyed the other ordinances of Heaven in their scrip- tural purity, were willing that ' The singing of Psalms ' should be restored among them unto a share of that purity. Though they blessed God for the religious endeavors of them who translated the Psalms into the meetre usually annexed at the end of the Bible, yet they be- held in the translation so many detractions from, additions to, and variations of, not only the text, but the sense of the psalmist that it was an offense unto them.
" Resolving then upon a new translation, the chief divines in the country took each of them a portion to be translated; among whom were Mr. Welde and Mr. Eliot of Roxbury, and Mr. Mather of Dorchester. These, like the rest, were so very different a genius for their poetry that Mr. Shephard, of Cambridge, in the occasion addressed them to this pur- pose:
" You Roxb*ry poets keep clear of the crime Of missing to give us a very good rhime. And you of Dorchester, your verses lengthen And with the text's pwn words, you will them strengthen.
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" The Psalms thus turned into meetre were printed at Cambridge in the year 1640. But afterwards it was thought that a little more of art was to be employed upon thein; and for that cause they were committed unto Mr. Dunster, who revised and refined this translation; and (with some assistance from Mr. Richard Lyon who, being sent over by Sir Henry Mildmay as an attendant unto his son, then a student at Harvard College, now resided in Mr. Dun- ster's house:) he brought it into the condition wherein our churches have since used it. Now though I heartily join with these gentlemen who wish that the poetry thereof were mended, yet I must confess, that the Psalms have never yet seen a translation that I know of nearer to the Hebrew original; and I am willing to re- ceive the excuse which our translators them- selves do offer us when they say: ' If the verses are not always so elegant as some desire or ex- pect, let them consider that God's altar needs not our pollishings; we have respected rather a plain translation, than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase. We have at- tended conscience rather than elegance, fidel- ity rather than ingenuity, that so we may sing in Zion the Lord's songs of praise, according unto his own will, until he bid us enter into our Master's joy to sing eternal hallelujahs.' "
If Cotton Mather had exercised the same
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judicial mind and Christian charity when deal- ing with the witches as when dealing with the labors of his brother-ministers, his name would not to-day be anathema. The " Bay Psalm- Book ", no less than the witches, needed to be gently dealt with, however, for in place of the dignified rendering which the English Bible had given the Psalms of David, there appeared from the hands of the New England translators such verses as these:
" Likewise the heavens he down-bow'd and he descended, & there was under his feet a gloomy cloud
And he on cherub rode and flew; yea, he flew on the wings of winde.
His secret place hee darkness made his covert that him round confinde."
Reverend Elias Nason wittily says of this triumph in collaboration, " Welde, Eliot and Mather mounted the restive steed Pegasus, Hebrew psalter in hand, and trotted in warm haste over the rough roads of Shemitic roots and metrical psalmody. Other divines rode behind, and after cutting and slashing, mending and patching, twisting and turning, finally produced what must ever remain the most unique specimen of poetical tinkering in our literature."
Judge Sewall, however, valued the " Bay
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Fsalm-Book " highly and was always making . a present of it to ladies whom he admired. He bought one, " bound neatly in Kids Leather ", for " 3 shillings & sixpence '*, deeming it a cheap and appropriate gift for one of the widows he was wooing. A copy of the first edition would now be worth several hundred dollars. The one owned by the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester bears on the inside of its front cover this statement, in the clear and -beautiful handwriting of Isaiah Thomas: " After advertising for another copy of this book and making enquiry in many places in New England &c. I was not able to obtain or even hear of another. This copy is therefore invaluable and must be preserved with the greatest care. Isaiah Thomas, Sep. 20, 1820." To the atrocities of the " Bay Psalm-Book " was doubtless due, in large measure, the execra- ble singing which the organ came to mitigate. The 1698 edition of the " Psalm-Book " had in its last pages " Some few directions " re- garding the musical rendering of its Psalms, but Judge Sewall, to whose lot it often fell to " set the tune " in the Old South Meeting- house, had often to record in his diary his utter failure in the performance of this important rite. Here is the pathetic entry concerning one of his mistakes: "He spake to me to set the tune. I intended Windsor and fell into
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High Dutch, and then essaying to set another tune went into a Key much too high. So I pray 'd to Mr. White to set it which he did well. Litch- field Tune. The Lord Humble me and In- struct me that I should be the occasion of any interruption in the worship of God."
Of course, the appalling length of many of the Psalms was one insuperable barrier to their successful performance. Some of them were one hundred and thirty lines long, and, when lined and sung, consumed a full half-hour — during which the congregation stood. A parson who had forgotten to bring his sermon to meet- ing with him. could give out a long Psalm and go comfortably home and back before the congregation had finished singing. Gradually, the " lining " of the Psalms — reading them off, that is, line by line, for the benefit of those who " wanted books and skill to read " — was realized to be one reason why the singing was so bad and, after long and bitter con- troversy, this practice was abandoned. Then there came another fierce battle over the de- mand that the singing should be by note. In the Xevr England Chronicle of 1733, we find the conservatives* objection to this innova- tion voiced as follows: " Truly I have a great jealousy that if we begin to sing by rule, the next thing will be to pray. hy rule and preach by rule and then comes popery"
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Yet the way of progress won ultimately, as it was bound to do. And thus the *' singing- school " came to be born. This important New England institution ranks properly as an amusement, and so will be discussed in our chapter dealing with recreations of the olden times. But it is important to note that in its beginnings, it was intimately related — just as we shall show the tavern to have been — to the all-important meeting-house of old New England.
By the time of the Revolutionary War, many new Psalm-Books of varying wretchedness had appeared; but music, as we know it to-day, scarcely had a voice in New England worship until 1778, when William Billings, a tanner by trade but a musician by avocation, pub- lished an abridgment of his " New England Psalm Singer ", which came to be known as " Billings' Best " and attained considerable popularity. Doctor Louis Elson has said of Billings that he " broke the ice which was congealing New England music."
The feature of Billings' tunes was " fuguing ", of whose power to raise the soul to Heaven Billings was very proud. Doctor Mather Byles also approved of this style of music and wrote a little verse to express his appreciation. But many other little verses there were in quite a different tone. Here are two, reprinted
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in the "American Apollo" in 1792, which pur- port to have been " written out of temper on a Fannel in one of the Fues in Salem Church " :
" Could poor King David but for once To Salem Church repair; And hear his Psalms thus warbled out, Good Lord, how he would swear.
" But could St. Paul but just pop in, From higher scenes abstracted, And hear his Gospel now explained, By Heavens, he'd run distracted.'*
It remained for Oliver Holden, who had Celtic blood in his veins,1 — as well as blood of purest Puritan strain, — to write hymns which were really beautiful and so put into enduring musical form the pent-up religious fervor of New England. Holden, like Billings, pub- lished a number of hymn books, the most notable being " The Worcester Collection of Sacred Harmony ", given to the world in 1797 and printed by Isaiah Thomas of Worcester from movable types bought in Europe, the last to be so bought for use in this country. Coro- nation, probably the best known American hymn ever written, was composed for the dedi- cation, in May, 1801, of a church which stood
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almost in front of Holden's home in Charles- town. The church has long since disappeared, but the house in which Holden wrote Corona- tion still survives, as does the organ upon which he harmonized it. That this hymn is a splen- didly stirring one, even we of to-day well know. A century ago it roused the Yankees to a pitch of religious enthusiasm not unlike the patriotic frenzy of the sans-culottes when the Marseillaise was being sung.
But it was the sermon and not the hymns, however good, which engaged the chief interest of pious New Englanders. These sermons were wont to be written in a fine hand on small pages four by six inches in size, and the one which I hold before me in manuscript must have been as severe a tax upon the eyes of the parson as upon the patience of his congregation. We of the twentieth century are congenitally disqualified, however, to pronounce upon the sermons of our ancestors. The temper of that day was argumentative, there was much leisure, during the performance of manual labors, to re- flect on the things of the Kingdom of Heaven — and there was very little else to distract the mind from what the parson had to say.
In the churches, or to speak more by the book, the " meeting-houses " of early New England, the whole social and intellectual, as well as religious, life of the day was concen-
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trated. The church was practically a club as well as a religious organization, and " going to meetin' " was the most exciting event of the week. To live near the meeting-house, close enough to be able to walk there, was the height of social privilege; but the necessity of jour- neying five or six miles to hear the word of God was not by any means regarded as an excuse for absence. Quite the contrary. For were there not endless possibilities of pleasure to be derived from cross-roads encounters, from church-porch gossipings before and after the sermon, and from the nooning period spent in the refreshment of the inner man ?
It is a curious and interesting fact that there was often a tavern near the meeting-house, which had been placed there for the express purpose of Sunday refreshment during this noon period. Many cases may be found in which such proximity was the condition with- out which no permit to sell " beare " could be obtained. Thus we find the records of 1651 granting to John Vyall of Boston " Libertie to keep a house of Common entertainment if the Countie Court Consent, -provided he keepe it near the new Tneeting-kouse."
Occasionally there were long and bitter fights in town-meeting about the location of the meeting-house. Fitchburg, Massachusetts, wrangled for ten years, 1786-1796, as to whether
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its proposed new structure should or should not be situated in the westerly part of the town. An amusing incident of the contest was that two tavern-keepers in that section, Jedidiah Cooper and Jacob Upton, in order to draw busi- ness their way, finally built a meeting-house of their own, which was used to some extent for preaching, but which, failing to be much fre- quented or well kept up, won for itself the name, the " Lord's Barn ", and was ultimately sold for thirty-six dollars. The one amicable and unani- mous vote connected with this whole contro- versy was concerning the amount of rum which might be consumed at the town's expense when, at the end of the ten years, the location of the new meeting-house was with difficulty agreed upon and a day appointed for the " raising." Thirty-eight dollars and one cent was appro- priated for " Rum and Shugar " to be assimi- lated on this occasion, and the resulting edifice was dedicated January 19, 1797, Reverend Zab- diel Adams of Lunenburg preaching the sermon. A curious story is told of the way in which Wickford, Rhode Island, got its parish church where it wanted to have it. This " oldest Episcopal church still standing in the northern part of the United States " was erected in 1707 at the top of what was then called McSparran Hill, and was long known as the Narragansett Church. In the course of seventy-five years,
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the population changed so much, however, that most of the worshippers who came to the church had to travel from Wickford, seven miles away. Yet the McSparran faction was not willing that the church should be removed to the more convenient site. Then the Wick- fordians resolved on a coup d'etat. The road, from the place where the church stood to Wick- ford, was all down hill. Mustering their forces, one evening (in 1800) , and pressing into the serv- ice all the oxen in the neighborhood, the Wick- ford contingent placed the edifice on wheels and, while their opponents soundly slept, hauled it to the spot at the foot of the hill which seemed to them the most convenient place for it. As there was no getting the building up the hill again, the McSparran folk had no vent for the wrath that possessed them. For, of course, they could not use unchurchly language.
Settlements which had built their meeting- houses on such high hills or in such out-of-the- way places that no innkeeper could be per- suaded to go into business in that location were wont to erect " fire rooms " near by, in which the frozen congregation might thaw out between services. Here, in the genial noon- ing hour, many a good time was enjoyed as lunches were warmed up before the blazing logs, and the satisfying flip made to sizzle cheerily on the hearth. The social side of the
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" meetin' " was here seen at its best, and while the mothers compared their domestic difficulties and the fathers discussed the various " points " of the sermon and talked over the notices*which the parson had read from the pulpit or which they had seen posted on the meeting-house door, the young people cast sheep's eyes at each other as young people have ever done.
Many a happy marriage dated its prefatory chapter from words of love whispered during this nooning period. In the diary of a little Puritan maiden ' who had a home down Cape Cod way, we find some entries which show this clearly: " March 20, 1676. This day had a private fast. Mr. WHlard spoke to the second commandment. Mr. Eliot prayed. While we were ceasing for half an hour, I saw Samuel Checkly and smiled; this was not the time to trifle and I repented, especially as he looked at me so many times after that I found my mind wandering from the psalm. And afterwards, when the Biskets, Beer, Cider and Wine were distributed he whispered to me that he would rather serve me than the elders, which wa3 a wicked thing to say, and I felt myself to blame."
" June 19. Samuel Checkly hath given in his testimony, hath witnessed a good confession, and become a Freeman."
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" October 2. Today I plucked some yellow and purple flowers and have opened the windows in the fore-room; I can but rejoice and be glad. Samuel Checkly, coming through the swamp at the same time . . . would fain have brought my flowers for me, but that seemed to me not maidenly or proper to allow, so he returned by the way he came."
" October 30. Mother hath gone to the fast at Jabez Rowland's. I would fain cook the pumpkin for the morrow, but, though I do not go to the service I must keep the fast at home. It is weary doing nothing; Samuel Checkly's mother is too sick to go, and surely Samuel will stay at home with her."
" Boston, April 2, 1677. Mother has writ that Samuel Checkly's mother was buried in March. There was a fine funeral but she says she had tasted better funeral meats. The nap- kins were good but sadly stained by the saffron in the meat. Poor Samuel! "
" November 16, 1677. A letter hath come from Samuel Checkly by the hand of Eliphalet Tishmond, which hath set my heart in a flutter. Since good Mistress Checkly hath entered in to her Rest, poor Samuel hath been very lonely."
This is the end of the diary, for its shy little writer, Hetty Shepard, was soon afterwards married to Samuel Checkly, the good youth who first made love to her during a Sunday
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nooning period — and who had been " lonely " ever since.
One other entry, not about Samuel Checkly's " loneliness," which Hetty Shepard made in this diary during her visit to Boston, is as fol- lows: " Went to the meeting house, but could not sit with Uncle John because he had been voted to the first seat, while Aunt Mehitable was voted into the third. This seems to ine not according to justice, but Aunt Mehitable bade me consider the judgment of the Elders and the ti thing-man as above mine own. The pews are larger than I ever saw being square with balus- trades around them. A chair in the centre for the aged. One corner pew was lifted high above the stairs almost to the ceiling, and was sat in by the blacks."
Which brings us to one of the most charac- teristic of all the interesting customs connected with worship in old New England, — " seating the meeting." Arranging the congregation with due deference to rank was quite as difficult a process for our forefathers as the ceremonies of a Pumpernickel court. Usually, certain com- mittees had this very important matter in charge, but occasionally the town meeting directly prescribed who should sit where. Com- monly, there were seven ranks or divisions in the seating, and sometimes these extended to fifteen. For trustees, justices, and subscribers
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of forty shillings per annum toward the church rates, especially good seats were provided. Those giving thirty shillings had the next best places, thus grading downward to pew Num- ber 6, which contained nine-shilling contrib- utors. Pew Number 7 was usually for young men who were not yet heads of families.
Then came the feminine contingent, led off by the inevitable widows, — ministers' widows naturally coming first, as deserving of most honor. Following whom the wives of the sub- scribers of forty shillings found place. But the classification was not wholly by money; po- sition and family immensely influenced — and so complicated — the work of the seating com- mittees.
The highest and most privileged seats were, of course, " at the table." Next in rank came the fore-seats, which faced the congregation on either side of the pulpit. When Judge Sewall married his second wife, Mrs. Tilly, he was invited, by virtue of her rank, to occupy a fore-seat. With much pride he writes: " Mr. Oliver in the names of the Overseers invites my wife to sit in the foreseat. I thought to have brought her into my pue. I thank him and the Overseers." But this new wife died at the end of a few months, and then Sewall reproached himself for the pride he had taken in this honor, and left his place in the men's fore-seat. " God
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in his holy Sovereignty put my wife out of the Fore Seat. I apprehended I had cause to be ashamed of my Sin and loath myself for it, and retired into my Pue." When Sewall was himself asked to take a part in " seating of the meeting ", he diplomatically evaded the re- sponsibility; full well he knew that it was practically impossible to please everybody while
" In the goodly house of worship, where in order
due and fit, As by public vote directed, classed and ranked
the people sit; Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly squire
before the clown From the brave coat, lace embroidered, to the
gray frock shading down."
In nearly all towns negroes had seats apart, black women being seated in an enclosed pew labeled " B. W. ", and negro men in one la- beled " B. M." Boys sat on the pulpit and gallery stairs, and unmarried men and un- married women by themselves on opposite sides of the church. Occasionally a group of unmarried women would build and own a " maids pue " in common. In the church records of a town named Scotland, in Connecti- cut, may be found an entry to the effect that " An Hurlburt, Pashants and Mary Lazelle, Younes Bingham, prudenc Hurlburt and Je-
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rusha meachem" are empowered to build a pew " provided they build within a year and raise ye pue no higher than the seat is on the Mens side." Restrictions as to the height of the pew almost invariably accompanied permits to build.
For, whereas the first seats of the early New . England meeting-houses had been rough benches placed on legs, like milking-stools, by the end of the seventeenth century the worshippers sat in pews whose partition walls extended so high that only the tops of the tallest heads could be seen when the occupants were in their places. The seats here were still narrow and uncom- fortable, however, being mere shelves on hinges, which ranged around three and sometimes four sides of the pew. During the psalms and the prayers, which were frequently half an hour in length, the people stood, leaning on the sides of the pew, their seats shut up to give them more room.
" And when at last the loud Amen Fell from aloft, how quickly then The seats came down with heavy rattle, Like musketry in fiercest battle."
Wriggling boys looked forward eagerly, of course, to this opportunity to signify their ap- proval of the Amen. Thus there came to be such entries in the church-books as this: " The
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people are to Let down their Seats without Such Nois." " The boyes are not to wickedly noise down their pew-seaU." The slamming of pew-seats could often be heard more than half a mile away from the meeting-house, in the summer-time; there seems quite sufficient ground, therefore, for the story about a South- erner, who, entering an old New England church rather late one Sunday morning, exclaimed in amazement, as the rattle of descending seats fell upon his ears: " What, do you Northern people applaud in church? "
Strutting up and down the aisle in any one of these old meeting-houses was to be seen the tithing-man, whom Mrs. Earle has well called " the most grotesque, the most extraordinary, the most highly colored figure in all the dull New England church-life." Laborious and delicate as was the work of the seating com- mittee, it was as nothing compared to the task of the tithing-man, that functionary who cate- chized the heads of the ten families under his care, saw that the living expenses of his charges were never disproportionate to the sum they appropriated for church-worship, and, on the Sabbath, walked grandly about, bearing his wand of office and using it with all zeal. This wand was a long staff, sharply knobbed at one end, — the boys* end. From the other end hung a long fox-tail or a hare's foot, with which
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to tickle the men and women who had dropped into a gentle doze during the sermon. Caraway seed was supposed to be a fortifier against over- whelming sleepiness. For which reason the little bouquet which formed a part of the women's going to meetin' toilet, in summer, nearly always included, with its pinks or white rose, a sprig of this fragrant plant. But the men, of course, disdained such helps, and fell asleep very often. Sometimes, when the tithing- man pricked them with his staff, they sprang up, as did Mr. Tomlins of Lynn on a certain occasion, to " prophanlie exclaim in a loud voice curse ye wood-chuck, he dreaming so it seemed yt a wood-chuck had seized and bit his hand." One Puritan preacher ironically suggested to a congregation, which he observed to be in a somnolent state, that they might like better the Church of England service of sitting down and standing up, a very dreadful threat which must have roused them quite effectively. For the Church of England was to the Puritan like a red rag to a bull. When Episcopalians were granted the right to hold services in the east end of Boston's Town House, in the spring of 1686 (in anticipation of the arrival in Massa- chusetts of the Colonial Governor, Sir Edmund Andros), Samuel Sewall piously chanted "as exceedingly suited to the day " the one hun- dred and forty-first Psalm, beginning: "Lord,
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I cry unto thee; make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto thee ", and ending after much similar lamentation with the petition, " Let the wicked fall into their own nets whilst that I withal escape."
A great many things that seem to us very puzzling, very narrow, and very repellent in the early history of New England, become quite clear when we realize that at the beginning the identity of Church and State was absolute. There were no freemen except Church members, no tests of citizenship except adherence to the creed of the fathers. It was not then a ques- tion of Church and State; the Church was the State.1 Heresy and sedition were thus synony- mous terms. Thus when Anne Hutchinson, tried at the ecclesiastical bar for an offense against religion (as those in power then under- stood the term), was found guilty, it was in- evitable that her punishment should be banish- ment from the colony. The year of her perse- cution, 1637, was just seventeen years after the Pilgrims had landed in America, and their spirit of desperate sincerity and seriousness was still strong. Work and prayer still occupied all their thought. Religion was the sole comfort of their souls, " the food ", as has been said, " which ate up all the attachments and re-
■ Ministers were generally chosen in open town meeting; and their support, which was at flint voluntary, early became a regular item of civic expense.
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membrances of home, all their regrets at leaving it, very many if not all their baser passions." And as it was scarcely to be expected then that they would supinely suffer the presence among them of one actively at work to pull down the institutions and beliefs they held so dear, so we should not wonder that, fifty years later, they resented with corroding hatred the high- handedness of Sir Edmund Andros.
Men who had withstood the temptations of the Devil and fallen into no heresy were so proud of the fact that they sometimes had it incorporated into their epitaphs! Thus Thomas Dudley of Roxbury left as his dying message:
" Farewell dear wife, children and friends,
Hate heresy, make blessed ends,
Bear poverty, live with good men,
So shall we meet with joy again.
Let men of God in courts and churches watch
O'er such as do a toleration hatch,
Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice,
To poison all with heresy and vice.
If men be left and otherwise combine,
My epitaph's I dy'd no libertine."
Sewall was the last man to " hatch a tolera- tion." So, though it is amusing, it is also touching to follow his mental processes at this time. He has grave doubts whether he can conscientiously serve in the militia under a flag in which the cross, cut out by Endicott,
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has been replaced, and he finally answers his own question by resigning as captain of the South Company. All forms and ceremonies, symbols and signs, it must be recollected, were to the Puritans marks of the Beast, and it was torture to them to see them coming back into use; to have a priest in a surplice conducting, in their Town House, a service they had crossed the seas to escape; to see men buried accord- ing to the prayer-book; and to learn that mar- riages, which they had made a purely civil con- tract, must henceforth be solemnized by the rites of the church. Regardless of the wishes of Sewall and his kind, however, Sir Edmund Andros determined that Church of England services should be carried on, and, pending the erection of a suitable edifice, declared that a prayer-book service must be held in one of the three Boston meeting-houses. Vigorously the Puritans protested that they could not " consent to part with it to such use " and exhibited a deed showing their right to control service in the South Meeting-house. But it was all of no avail; the service was held there just the same, and " Goodm. Needham, tho' had re- solv'd to ye Contrary, was prevail'd upon to Ring ye Bell." The ringing of that bell sounded the knell of Puritan autocracy in New England. For the most part, however, the people in the towns, as well as in the villages, still clung
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to the long, long sermons and the dreary, ex- temporaneous prayers for whose sake they had exiled themselves. And the fact that their meeting-houses were stifling hot in summer and freezing cold in winter scarcely affected them at all. Veritable stoics were these Puritans! The women, to be sure, sometimes had little foot-stoves filled with live coals to keep their feet warm during the service; and they doubt- less needed them. For, even in the coldest weather, the Puritan woman wore linen under- clothing and gowns with short elbow sleeves and round low necks. Only their hands and their heads were warmly clothed, the former by means of mittens and muffs,1 and the latter by the use of quilted hoods. Yet even foot-stoves were not always allowed. After the First Church of Roxbury was destroyed by fire, in 1747, the use of foot-stoves in meeting was there prohibited. In order to avoid the necessity of similar action the Old South Church of Boston made this rule, January 16, 1771: "Whereas danger is apprehended from the stoves that are frequently left in the meeting-house after the publique worship is over; Voted, that the saxton make diligent search on the Lord's Day evening and in the evening after a lecture, to see if any stoves are left in the house, and that if he find any there he take them to his own
1 Often they carried hot potatoes in the muSi,
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house; and itt is expected that the owners of such stoves make reasonable satisfaction to the Saxton for his trouble before they take them away."
Since men had no stoves on which to warm their feet, they sometimes brought their dogs to church to serve as a foot-muff. By reason of which custom, we find in the records of the early churches such entries as: "Whatsoever doggs come into the meeting-house in time of public worship, their owners shall each pay sis- pence."
The First Church of Boston, which, in 1778, began to heat its meeting-house by means of a stove, has generally been credited with head- ing the procession of the Puritan Sybarites; but it is now conceded that this distinction be- longs to Hadley, Massachusetts, which had an iron stove in its meeting-house as early as 1734. In 1783 the Old South Church, Boston, adopted this luxurious innovation, thus causing the Evening Post of January 25, 1783, to bewail modern customs as follows :
" Extinct the sacred fire of love, Our zeal grown cold and dead, In the house of God we fix a stove To warm us in their stead."
Stove and anti-stove factions now developed in every New England congregation. One very
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amusing story is told about the wife of an anti- stove deacon, who found the unaccustomed heat so exhausting that when the minister referred in his sermon to " heaping coals of fire " she could bear the stifling atmosphere no longer and fainted. Upon being resuscitated, she mur- mured languidly that her bad turn was all due to the " heat of that stove." Her discomfort had a keen rival in her chagrin, when she was told that no fire had as yet been hghted in the church's recent purchase.
The minister who could hold the balance even, in the midst of these petty bickerings, and keep his people spiritual-minded and honest- hearted, whatever controversies or dissensions might be under way, had to be a very remarka- ble person. There is abundant evidence that the clergy of early New England were remark- able. The people usually appreciated their saintly qualities, too, and gave them all honor alive as well as dead. To be sure, the salaries paid these good men seem to us of to-day very small, and we wonder how a family could have been brought up and sent to college on so few pounds of actual money per year. Yet we can- not escape the fact that every householder contributed, according to his means, to the sup- port of the church and its activities and gave to the parson, also, a share of all good things which came fortuitously his way. At Plymouth,
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in 1662, the court provided that to " the able and godly minister among them " should be given some part of every whale there cast up from the sea. In Newbury the first salmon caught each year went to the parson; and Judge Sewall records that he visited the minis- ter and " carried him a Bushel of Turnips, cost me five shillings, and a Cabbage cost half a Crown." (The " donation party " for the minis- ter was a New England institution of much later development and of considerably less dignity.) Wood for the parson was regarded as a regular part of the parish responsibility, and when it was not forthcoming the minister felt no hesi- tation about alluding publicly to his lack. Thus on a certain November Sunday, Reverend Mr. French of Andover said significantly: " I will write two discourses and deliver them in this meeting-house on Thanksgiving Day, provided I can manage to write them without a fire." Ezra Stiles, afterwards president of Yale and one of the ablest men of his day, when a minister at Dighton, Massachusetts, records in his diary, with gratitude (March 14, 1777), that he is not in debt for his subsistence during the past year " and blessed be God there is some Meal in the Barrel & a little Oyl in the Cruise. The people here give me £60 a year, House & wood." In the early days, the "minister tax" was
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compulsory and averaged twopence on the pound of a man's tax-list, or its equivalent, at the market value, in any of the necessaries of living. The sums thus realized were modest ones. The Reverend Jedidiah Mills, who for more than fifty years presided over the meet- ing-house at Huntington, Connecticut, received for a long time only fifty pounds a year. The salary of his colleague at the Episcopal Church of the same town was fixed in 1800 at " one hundred pounds lawful money and forty loads of wood." Most ministers had large families, too, believing that they should set an example in this way. Cotton Mather, who himself had fifteen children, records with no little pride some of the large families of his day. He tells of one woman who had twenty-two children and of another who, having borne twenty-three children to one man, had the courage, mtrabUe dictu, to take unto herself, upon his death, another devoted spouse. Still a third woman instanced by Mather bore seven and twenty children. Reverend John Sherman, of Watertown, Massachusetts, had twenty-six children by two wives. Reverend Samuel Wil- lard, the first minister of Groton, Massachusetts, had twenty children, and Reverend Abijah Weld of Attleboro, Massachusetts, reared fifteen children and a grandchild on an annual salary of about two hundred and twenty dollars. Rev-
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erend Moses Fiske had sixteen children and suc- cessfully married off three daughters and sent three sons to college, all on a salary which ranged from sixty to ninety pounds and was paid chiefly in corn and wood.
Ushering babies into the world was an ex- pensive indulgence, too, in the early days, for the reason that special social and religious observances accompanied the event. Beer in plenty was brewed well in advance of the birth. Judge Sewall speaks of preparing " groaning- beer " nearly two months before we find him recording the arrival of his newest offspring, and there is a tradition that " groaning-cakes " were also baked to serve to visitors at this time. " At the birth of their children they drink a glass of wine and eat a bit of a certain cake, which is seldom made but upon these oc- casions ", writes the Frenchman, Misson, in his " Travels in England ", and from various allusions it would appear that this custom ob- tained in New England also. Anna Green Winslow writes of being taken, as a little girl, to make a " setting up visit " to a relative whose baby was then about four weeks old. " It cost me a pistareen to Nurse Eaton for two cakes, which I took care to eat before I paid for them", she tells us quaintly; a pistareen was about seventeen cents, which made these nurse's cakes come a bit high. Money, cloth-
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ing, and petty trinkets were always given to the nurse at such times, and it was also custom- ary to invite for dinner, in the early days of the young child's life, the midwife, the nurses, and all the women of the neighborhood who had helped with work or advice during the " groan- ing." One Sewall baby was scarcely two weeks old when seventeen women dined at the Judge's house on boiled pork, beef, and fowls; roast beef and turkey; pies and tarts. At another time " minc'd Pyes and cheese '* were added to the menu, and sack and claret were often then enjoyed.
As short and simple as the annals of the poor are the entries which tell the life story of many a godly New England minister. The calling of Reverend Samuel Hopkins, who married a sister of the celebrated Jonathan Edwards, is thus related in the record book of the West Springfield, Massachusetts, parish, which he served for thirty-six years. The facts, as here set down, are interesting because they show that a minister was procured in much the same manner as we have seen to be the case when a schoolmaster was needed.
" In order to procuer a minister, there having been much discours About sending for a min- ister and whither to goe toward Boston or to send to the lower Colledg, Benjamin Smith (having business to goe to Boston as was sup-
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posed) made an offer that he would get a min- ister and If he did not, would have notheing for his pains, But he not being Redy to goe, It was Voted and Concluded that the County should take care to send by the first oper- tunitye toward Boston to se after a minister by sum man that was goeing that way about his own busines. And after a minister ware obtained to pay what nesessary charg should be expended in bringing of a minister but not to pay anything If no minister Came. But only what was nesessary for the minister's charge, not aloweing anything for the mans Journey. And that the present Comitey give orders to the man that went If any opertunity presented."
On December 21 following the chronicler writes:
" Votes made and past To alow Deacon Parsons and Deacon Ely 2 shillings per day for 9 days a piece in their Journey to Boston after a minister and to Deacon Parsons 12 shillings for his horse and Deacon Ely 10 shillings. And to Deacon Parsons 10 shillings for his time to New Haven and to alow for ther expences the Sum 3-2-1 to boston and new haven." As a result of the work done by these three worthies — and the horses which bore them on their journeys — Reverend Samuel Hopkins, on Janu- ary 25, 1720, was invited to serve the parish at West Springfield.
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I have found do record of an ordination ball on the occasion of Mr. Hopkins' installation at West Springfield, but there is still in existence a letter of invitation, written by Reverend Timothy Edwards, who was ordained in Wind- sor in 1694,. to Mr. and Mrs. Stoughton, asking them to attend the ordination ball to be given in his, the minister's house; this may very well be accepted as evidence that the ministers did not universally discountenance dancing. But though there might or might not be an ordina- tion ball, there was always an ordination sup- per with " Ordination Beare ", " pompions ", " turces " cooked in various ways, " rhum " and " cacks." The items of one tavern-keeper's bill, on a certain ordination occasion held in Hartford in 1784, show quite an appalling ex- penditure for liquors and " segars."
We must remember, as we marvel on this matter, that it was an age when everybody drank. And an " ordination journey " was a great event in the life of a minister. Many a weary trip was his, in which there was no ele- ment of junketing. Often the parson was ex- posed to very real dangers as he went about his daily work. As late as 1776 it was voted by the town of Winthrop, Maine, to pay the Reverend Mr. Shaw " four shillings which he paid for a pilot through the woods when he went there to conduct services." Treading a
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dangerous path through the uncharted forest played a much larger part in the average parson's life than " segars " and " bitters " before break- fast. So while we relate, because it is amusing, the story of the Reverend Ephraim Judson, ninth minister of Taunton, Massachusetts, of whom it is told that on hot summer Sundays he would give out the longest hymn in the hymn- book and then stroll forth and stretch out under a tree while his perspiring congregation toiled through their involuntary praise of the Lord, it must be borne in mind that self-in- dulgence on the part of the clergy was a thing of exceeding rarity.
" The Creature called Tobacko " had never been very genially welcomed in New England, either by parson or people. At the beginning of the colony's history, tobacco was forbidden to be planted except in very small quantities " for meere necessitie, for phisick, for preserva- tion of health, and that the same be taken privatly by auncient men." The law of Con- necticut permitted a man to smoke once, if he went on a journey of ten miles, but never more than once a day and never in another man's house. And concerning the use of tobacco on the Sabbath, orders were severe and explicit throughout New England. The feeling seems to have been that this " creature " was a good thing of which too much use might- easily be
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made. Highly virtuous men, like Roger Will- iams,1 employed it in their families at times of sickness, and old women who were in bad health used it also. There is quoted in an ac- count of Barnstable an old letter, in which a citizen who had commanded the Plymouth forces during King Philip's War declines, be- cause of his wife's ill health. Governor Wins- low's appointment to lead an expedition against the Dutch. He pleads:
" My wife, as is well known to the whole town, is not only a weak woman, and has been so all along, but now, by reason of her age, being sixty-seven years and upwards, and na- ture decaying, so her illness grows more strongly upon her. . . . She cannot lie for want of breath. And when she is up, she cannot light a pipe of tobacco but it must be lighted for her." 2
Yet though a man could not smoke on the way to worship, there is abundant evidence that he enjoyed the journey as he jolted along on his sturdy farm horse, with his wife perched on the pillion behind him, across the fields and through the narrow bridle-paths which led to the meeting-house on the hill or to the church green in the village.
1 We find Roger Williams writing Winthrop in 1660: " My youngest son, Joseph, was troubled with a spice of an epilepsy . ./but it has pleased God, by his taking of tobacco, perfectly, as we hope, to cure him."
* "Historic Towns of New England," p. 390. C. P. Putnam's
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As he drew near to the house of worship, a fillip might be given to his comfort and self- complacency by contemplation of the stocks, the pillory, and the whipping-post, which were often placed in close juxtaposition to the church building — very likely because offenders against the laws of the State were always held to have broken the higher law also. Nor were these very cruel modes of punishment so infrequently in use as some historians would have us think. We find by the records that at Taunton, Mas- sachusetts, on a bright May training-day of 1656 Alexander Aimes sat in the stocks, a Scotchman was publicly whipped, and Kath- eren Aimes stood on the church green wearing on her breast the shameful scarlet letter which Hawthorne has so poignantly immortalized in his story about Hester Prynne. All this on a single day! And examples might easily be multiplied.
The Reverend Samuel Peters, in his deeply resented " History of Connecticut ", declared that the people of that State were wont to look very sour and sad on the eve of the Sabbath, — as if they had lost their dearest friends. " Here they observe the Sabbath with more exactness than did the Jews ", he wrote. " A Quaker preacher told them, with much truth, that they worshipped the Sabbath and not the God of the Sabbath. Whereupon, without charity,
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these hospitable people condemned the Quaker as a blasphemer of the holy Sabbath, fined, tarred, and feathered him, put a rope about his neck, and plunged him into the sea."
Another of Peters' delectable stories about Sabbath-breaking in Connecticut is to the effect that in 1750 " an episcopal clergyman, born and educated in England, who had been in holy orders above twenty years, broke their sab- batical law by combing a lock of discomposed hair on the top of his wig; at another time, for making a humming noise which they called whistling; at a third time, by walking too fast from church; at a fourth, by running into church when it rained; at a fifth, by walking in his garden and picking a bunch of grapes: for which several times he was complained of by the Grand Jury, had warrants granted against him, was seized, brought to trial, and paid a considerable sum of money."
Even the Sunday-school, when first intro- duced, was regarded in New England as a pro- fanation of the Sabbath! In the Newburyport Herald of January 12, 1791, may be found an account of the establishment of Sunday- schools in Philadelphia by some benevolent persons in the city, with this comment: " Pity their benevolence did not extend so far as to afford them tuition on days when it is lawful to follow such pursuits, and not thereby lay
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a foundation for the profanation of the Sab- bath." This in spite of the fact that Sunday- schools here, as in England, where Robert Raikes started them in 1780, were instituted for the express purpose of teaching poor children to read in order that they might learn their Catechism or study the Bible.
Yet the very New England which frowned upon Sunday-schools welcomed the Jew.
Nothing in our early history is more inter- esting than the hospitality accorded by New- port, in 1658 or thereabouts, to the little com- pany of Hebrews who then first came there to live. Yeshuat Israel, or Salvation of Israel, in Newport, is said to be the oldest Jewish con- gregation in America; and the synagogue on Touro Street, which was organized in 1680, antedates any other on the North American con- tinent. In 1769, out of the eleven thousand in- habitants of Newport, three hundred were Jews; which inspired Cotton Mather in his " Mag- nalia " to characterize the town as " the com- mon receptacle of the convicts of Jerusalem and the outcasts of the land."
Mather in this passage once again shows himself constitutionally disqualified to write history. For the first band of Hebrews who made their homes in Newport were men of great cultivation and enlightenment. Their numbers were augmented in 1694 by a number
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of families from Curacoa or one of the adja- cent islands in the West Indies, the General Assembly of Rhode Island having voted ten years before in favor of allowing Jews to settle in their colony. It was felt that these people made exceedingly desirable citizens. That they contributed notably to the great commercial success of Newport by the trade- secrets they brought with them is a well estab- lished fact. The rendering of spermaceti by a new method which they introduced was es- pecially appreciated in a society which had hitherto been forced to depend for light on home-made candles of bayberry wax.
The earthquake at Lisbon and the Inquisition in Spain were responsible for adding many more Jews to the population of Newport about the middle of the eighteenth century. Among those who came at this time was Reverend Isaac Touro, first minister of the synagogue which still stands half-way up the hill over- looking the harbor of Newport. Peter Harri- son, who was the architect of this building, carefully conformed to the rules for erecting such sacred houses, with the result that the building is on an elevation, fronts due south, re- gardless of the line of the adjoining street, and is so planned that worshippers face the east when praying. The edifice was also provided with an oven, in which all the unleavened bread
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but its interior is practically unchanged, and here may be seen to-day the only three-decked pulpit remaining in New England, and the only surviving pulpit of any pattern from which the Bishop of Cloyne ever preached. Mr. Hony- man was holding a service in Trinity when Dean Berkeley, as he was then, arrived in New- port and announced himself in impressive fash- ion. A messenger climbed the steep hill on which the churoh stands and handed to the verger a letter which looked so important that that functionary, clad in his long black robe and holding a staff in his hand, marched up the center aisle and solemnly handed the com- munication to the officiating priest. Mr. Hony- man opened the letter and read it, first to him- self, and then aloud. In it the celebrated wan- derer announced that he was about to land in Newport on his way to the West Indies. Im- mediately the entire congregation adjourned to meet and escort to the church " Pious Cloyne," as Berkeley was later called.
The organ of Trinity Church was that de- signed by Berkeley for the Massachusetts town which bears his name. When this commu- nity rejected the gift on the ground that "an organ is an instrument of the devil for the en- trapping of men's souls ", Trinity Church fell heir to the donation.
How unspeakably tragic it was felt to be in
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old New England when any one of Puritan blood became a convert to Rome is seen in the pained and scanty references to the romantic fate of Eunice Williams, daughter of " the re- deemed captive u, and sister of the Reverend Stephen Williams of Longmeadow. During the sack of Deerfield, in 1714, the whole Will- iams family had been taken captive by the Indians, but after a lapse of years all returned from Canada except Eunice, who had there espoused the Roman Catholic faith, and, while still very young, married an Indian chief of the Iroquois tribe. Every effort was made by her relatives to induce her to leave her Indian family, but she would not come back, even for a visit, until 1740. In August of that year, Parson Williams of Longmeadow, a Harvard graduate, was notified that Eunice Williams was in Albany. At once he set off to meet his sister, accompanied by his brother-in-law, another parson. In his diary he records that their re- union was a "joyful, sorrowful one." The en- tire party, which included Eunice, her husband, her two children, and some friends, were on this occasion induced to come to Longmeadow for a visit, and, as might have been supposed, " ye whole place was greatly moved " thereby. Now Eunice had been only five when torn from her Puritan background; yet it was con- fidently expected that she would abandon her
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Romish faith immediately upon being exposed to " publick worship with us"! The utmost astonishment prevailed because she did no such thing. Though she came to New England three times after this first visit, al! attempts to make her settle in the country or renounce her adopted religion were in vain. It will be understood that " the heathen " were prayed for with especial fervor in Stephen Williams' pulpit.
Very likely it was held to be an answer to these prayers that in 1800 Thomas Williams, Eunice's grandson, brought to Longmeadow to be educated two lads he called his sons. No one ever questioned the Indian paternity of John, who was seven at this time. But the family background of Eleazar Williams, the other boy, a lad whose age could not easily be determined and who had absolutely no Indian characteristics in form or feature, was then, and has ever since remained, a mystery. The oft-repeated story that he was the lost Dauphin of France has served to bathe in a romantic glow the austere outlines of the meeting-house . at Longmeadow, near Springfield, Massachu- setts, with which his boyhood days were inti- mately associated.
Sometimes these old New England meeting- houses are sought out by interested visitors from afar because of their unusual architectural
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beauty. This is true of the First Church at Bennington, Vermont, one of the most beau- tiful existing examples of the Christopher Wren style in church edifices. Erected in 1805, the present building carries oruthe traditions of the oldest church in Vermont, that which was here organized in 1763 with Reverend Jedidiah Dewey as its pastor. Colonel Ethan Allen oc- casionally worshipped in Mr. Dewey's con- gregation, but being inclined to free-thinking, sometimes took issue with statements made in the pulpit. Once, when some remark in the discourse displeased him, he rose in his place at the head of a prominent pew in the broad aisle, and saying in audible tones: "It's not so", started to leave the building. Whereupon Parson Dewey, lifting up his right hand and pointing with his forefinger directly at Colonel Allen, said: " Sit down, thou bold blasphemer, and listen to the word of God." Ethan Allen sat down and listened.
Another good Ethan Allen story ' is told in connection with a certain Father Marshall, who frequently preached in Vermont and was once the guest for the night at the home of the doughty colonel. In the morning the parson was duly called upon to attend family prayers. Had he been less quick-witted, he might have been somewhat disturbed at having handed to
1 " Memorials of a Century," by Isaac Jennings.
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him an atheistical book of Allen's, called " Ora- cles of Reason", its author remarking: "This is my bible. I suppose you have no objection to read out of my bible."
The reverend guest replied: " Let us sing a few verses first; have you any objection to the common psalm-book? "
" Not at all," said the host.
Whereupon Mr. Marshall, taking up the psalm-book which lay upon the table, selected and proceeded to read the psalm beginning with the stanza:
" Let all the heathen writers join To form one perfect book, — Great God, if once compared with thine, How mean their writings look! "
Allen, who was more man than infidel, ex- claimed at once with great cordiality and frank- ness: " Floored, Father Marshall; take your own Bible."
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CHAPTER V
GETTING MARRIED
NO one who reads history intelligently can have failed to observe that morals, as well as social customs, are inextricably bound up with climatic conditions, transporta- tion facilities, and the current standards of liv- ing. The fact that Madam Knight, when making her renowned journey from Boston to New York in 1704, frequently shared her sleeping-room with strange men — travelers like herself — does not at all mean that this estimable Boston schoolmistress was a lady of light morals, but simply that the exigencies of the situation and the customs of the time made necessary this, to us, revolting custom. In a similar way we may account for the much more revolting cus- tom of bundling, as it was called, which so frequently prefaced marriage in old New Eng- land. Historians generally are inclined to touch lightly if at all on this phase of our early social life, feeling, very likely, that to give such an institution the prominence it really possessed would be to detract from the dignity of their
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narrations. My excuse for taking a somewhat different attitude on this matter must, if an excuse is needed, lie in the contention Thomas Wentworth Higginson was wont to make: that the truth of history is a' sacred thing, a thing far more important than its dignity.
The almost systematic suppression of evi- dence in regard to the laxity of sexual relations in early New England is particularly to be con- demned for the reason that contemporary litera- ture repeatedly refers with utter frankness to bundling as a social custom. In The Contrast, one of the earliest of American plays, which was written by Royall Tyler, a New Englander, and first produced at the John Street Theater in New York in 1787,' Jonathan, when roundly snubbed for philandering with Jenny, declares thoughtfully that if that is the way city ladies act,- he will continue to prefer his Tabitha, with her twenty acres of rock, her Bible, a cow, and " a little peaceable bundling." Again, Mrs. John Adams, in a letter written in 1784 to her elder sister, Mrs. Cranch, re- fers to this custom in quite as casual a way as we might to-day to analogous moral lapses among people whose plane of intelli- gence is not quite ours. " Necessity," she says, as she describes the common cabin of the sailing-vessel in which she is just then crossing
1 See my " Romance of the American Theatre," p. 93.
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the Atlantic, " necessity has no law; but should I have thought on shore to have laid myself down in common with half a dozen gentlemen? We have curtains, it is true, and we only in part undress, — about as much as the Yankee bun- dlers."
Bundling, it should be understood, was not regarded as an immoral custom; it was a prac- tice growing out of the primitive social and in- dustrial conditions of the times, and was toler- ated, if not encouraged in the country districts as a means of promoting matrimony. Two young people who intended to marry lived far apart and worked early and late all the week. Only on Saturday evening and Sunday could they meet for love-making. Accordingly, on the eve of the Sabbath, the man would journey to the home of his beloved and, quite regularly, stay there until Sunday. Throughout the eve- ning they would be able to see each other only in the presence of the family, for houses were small and fires were a luxury. The one fire which most people could afford usually burned in the kitchen, and the ordinary farm-family could not afford to burn this after nine or ten o'clock. Hence the girl and her lover were bundled up together, after the others had re- tired for the night, often on the extra trundle- bed which most kitchens then contained, in order that they might keep warm and enjoy
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each other's company without waste of light or fuel. There appears to have been no secrecy about the practice; the very " bundling " was frequently done by the mother or sister of the girl who was being thus "courted." And, in theory, at any rate, the couple wore their clothing. None the less, the practice was fre- quently responsible for the birth of a child very soon after the young people had been made one in marriage. On this account it was that the church established what was known as " the seven months rule ", a rule, that is, that a child born within seven months after the marriage of its parents should not be accorded baptism (lacking which it was damned if it died) unless the parents made public confession of and ex- pressed penitence for the " sin of fornication before marriage." The records of the Groton (Massachusetts) Church show that in this one small town no less than sixty-six couples so confessed between 1761 and 1775. Nor is this an exceptional showing. In the history of Dedham, Braintree, and many other country towns, similar data may be found. Charles Francis Adams has called attention 1 to the in- teresting fact that in Braintree, at any rate, the period during which the greatest number of confessions of " fornication before marriage "
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occurred was precisely that of " the Great Awakening." He would thus seem to believe that a very close relationship existed between the morbid spiritual experiences for which the great and good Jonathan Edwards was prima- rily responsible, and the " tide of immorality " which then conspicuously " rolled over the land."
Bundling did not by any means originate in New England, it should, however, be under- stood. Doctor H. R. Stiles, who has published an authoritative monograph on this subject, shows that the practice is Teutonic in its origin; and establishes the fact, too, that it survived in North Wales and in Holland long after it was discountenanced in New England. He also shows that in no part of New England was the custom more prevalent than on Cape Cod, and that it held out longest there against the advance of more refined manners.
One interesting outgrowth of the custom was the arbitrary refusal of the clergy for many years to baptize infants born on the Sabbath, there being an ancient superstition that a child born on the Sabbath was also conceived on the Sabbath. Often this worked a gross injustice. Not until a Massachusetts parson of the high- est character became the father of twins on the Sabbath was this discrimination corrected; the worthy minister concerned then made public
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confession that he had previously been unjust and unfair in refusing to baptize Sabbath-bora babies.
Bundling came nearest to being a universal custom among farming folks in New England from 1750 to 1780; but it was at all times re- garded by the better classes as a serious evil. It is often attributed to Connecticut as if pecul- iar to that State; but this is probably due to the fact that certain Connecticut historians have dealt very frankly with the custom.1
In the Connecticut with which bundling is so largely associated, another and much better way was ultimately found in which to carry on the courtship in spite of hampering circum- stances. This was by the use of a " courting- stick ", a hollow stick about an inch in diameter and six or eight feet long, fitted with mouth- and ear-pieces, by means of which lovers could ex- change their tender vows while seated on either side of the fireplace in the presence of the entire family.
Publishing the banns three times in the meeting-house, at either town meeting, weekly lecture, or Sunday service, was a custom en- forced throughout New England, except in New Hampshire, for nearly two centuries. The names of the contracting parties were not only read out by the town clerk, the deacon, or the 1 See " History of Ancient Windsor," p. 496.
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minister, but a notice of the same was placed on the church door, or on a " publishing post." Yet the minister, so powerful in many ways, could not, in the early days, perform the mar- riage ceremony. That had to be done, until the beginning of the eighteenth century, by a magistrate.
No rings were used, it is interesting to know, for these magistrate-made marriages of early days. Mather was strongly averse to the use of rings, and another writer has characterized rings, when used for weddings, as " a Diabolhe- all Circle for the Divell to daunce in." With or without a ring, it was only a self-protective measure for a young man to marry as soon as he could. The State, which had a hand in most things, surrounded the bachelor with a system of espionage which must have been anything but comfortable. Young unmarried men were not allowed to keep house together and were made, as boarders in the homes of others, to feel that they were but poor and unproduc- tive things uselessly cumbering the earth.
Very likely that youth in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, who somewhat uncouthly married by capture the girl of his choice, had been sub- jected to a protracted season of snubbing for not having taken unto himself a wife. He first saw his future spouse at the beginning, it is said, of an ordination sermon; probably he felt,
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alter the " thirteenthly " had been expounded, that he had known and loved her a long time. At any rate, he rushed through the crowd the minute the benediction was pronounced, and seizing her in his arms, declared ardently: " Now I have got ye, you jade, I have, I HAVE." And the words that he spoke were true words; the shrinking modesty of the Puritan maiden was conspicuous, in this case at any rate, by its absence. Sammy Samples and Elizabeth Allen of Manchester, Massachusetts, were aided in their wooing by a dream, which came to him in Scotland and to her in her New Eng- land home. She, too, was in " meetin' " when her lover first .clapped his eye upon her. And she likewise made no difficulties. Later, when left a widow, Elizabeth married Colonel Crafts of Revolutionary fame and kept a thriving inn. Even then hers was an adventurous and color- ful life. Once, when sailing on a packet to Boston for her supplies, and improving her time by knitting, the sail of her craft veered suddenly and she was plunged into the sea. Tradition says she still kept on knitting and took seven stitches under water before being rescued.
Wooings brought tardily to a successful cli- max by the tactful intervention of the woman were no less frequent then, probably, than they are now. Puritan Priscilla inquiring shyly:
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" Why don't you speak for yourself, John? ** may be poetic license, but it is a welt authen- ticated historical fact that Ursula Wolcott, daughter of Governor Roger Wolcott of Con- necticut, quite pointedly suggested the all-im- portant question to her second cousin, Matthew Griswold, also a Connecticut governor.
In early life Governor Griswold had been passionately in love with a young lady of Dur- ham, Connecticut, who, in her turn, ^ was enamoured of a physician, whom she hoped would propose to her. Whenever Griswold pressed his suit, she pleaded that she wished for more time. After he had been told this re- peatedly, her suitor one day said, with dignity: " You shall have more time; you shall have a life-time.** And so he left her. But he suffered sorely, and ofttimes, to ease his aching heart, spoke of her whom he had loved to his sweet- faced cousin Ursula, who
" sat breathless, cowed Beneath resentment stern and deep, Stirred from his long enduring soul."
After a time, however, Matthew began to think a good deal about the charms of this sympa- thetic young cousin, yet, dreading another repulse, he looked but did not speak his love. Often Ursula would break the silence by ob-
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serving gently: " What said you, Cousin Mat- thew?" To which, suddenly panic-stricken, he invariably replied: " I said nothing."
Then one day, feeling that she must, Ursula precipitated the climax, according to Charles Knowles Bolton,1 who has versified the story and gives us its final chapter thus:
" And Matthew riding toward the door Heard her fight step upon the stairs And entering he found her there. She leaned upon the bannister With fingers clasped about the spindles; And tears, he saw, were lingering To dim her eyes.
" His pulse was quick, And yet he checked his eagerness.
* It surely cannot be,' he thought,
* It could not be that she would care.' The clock beat loudly through the hall To make the stillness yet more still. And Ursula, with steady voice
That trembled ere the words were done, Began: * What said you, Cousin Matthew? ' And he, as one who comes almost To comprehend, said thoughtfully:
* I did say nothing, Ursula.*
The colour faded from her cheeks; She spoke so timidly and low He scarcely heard her plaintive words ' 'Tis time you did.' "
1 " The Love Story of Ursula Wolcott." Lanwon, Wolffe and Co.
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A daughter, also named Ursula, who was born to these lovers, grew up to be a great beauty. She, too, married a cousin somewhat removed, — Lynde McCurdy, of Norwich, Con- necticut. Roger Griswold, the son of Ursula and of her shy husband, became in his turn governor of Connecticut, as his father and grandfather had been before him.
The romantic love story of Agnes Surriage and Sir Harry Frankland has come to be a part of our New England tradition. But concerning the equally romantic marriage of Sir John Sterling to Glorianna Fulsom, daughter of a blacksmith of Stratford, Connecticut, the facts are scarcely known. Glorianna, when a beauti- ful maiden of sixteen, was wooed and won by a handsome visitor to Stratford, who declared himself to be the son of a Scotch baronet. After their marriage (March 10, 1771), the bridegroom wrote home for funds, but, no funds coming, he began to teach school, just as if he had been a true Yankee, to support his blooming young wife. Then, when one daughter had been born to the happy couple, the hus- band and father sailed away to Scotland.
Gossip said that the young wife had been deserted and would never see or hear from her Scotch baronet again. A sad time this for Glorianna, who soon brought into the world a second daughter. One day, however, there
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came a letter from the absent one with the news that a ship fitted for the special comfort of his wife would be in New York at a certain time and had been engaged to convey her to Scot- land in the best style possible. Shortly after- wards arrived a quantity of goods of elegant material, from which, her husband directed, Glorianna must have a suitable outfit made in New York. Servants came, too, who were charged with the duty of making all prepara- tions for this momentous journey as easy as possible for the young wife and mother. The lavishness of Mr. Sterling's care for his lovely wife even extended to an invitation and an outfit for Glorianna's sister, if she chose to make the journey. But this offer was declined, and Glorianna set 'sail, unaccompanied by any of her kith and kin, for her life across the sea.
When the ship landed in Scotland, the wharf was found to be fairly crowded with carriages come to meet Mrs. Sterling. And after her ar- rival, Glorianna learned that a whole corps of governesses were in the house to teach her the accomplishments befitting the future lady of Sterling Castle. So, though she never returned to America or saw again any of her own folk — except two brothers, who some years later went over to make her a visit — she lived happy ever after, — and bore her husband twenty-two children. In 1791, she became Baroness Ster-
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Hug. Playfair's Baronetage shows that one of her sons succeeded to the title, and that her descendants held important offices in Scotland as late as 1879.
Save for Glorianna and Agnes Surriage all the belles of colonial times appear to have been widows; certainly 'they were seldom young girls, as happened a generation ago, or " the woman of forty ", as is often the case to-day. Mrs. Alice Morse Earle has humorously ex- pressed her wonder that any men were ever found in the first instance to marry a mere girl. Yet though so many widows ' became brides, there were still vast numbers of them left. In 1698 Boston was said to be " full of widows and orphans, and many of them very helpless creatures." No less than one-sixth of the com- municants of Cotton Mather's church were widows, and the bewildering array of widows among whom Judge Sewall had to choose, when confronted with the necessity of finding himself a new partner, has become a New Eng- land byword.
Peter Sargent, who built the beautiful Prov- ince House in Boston, had married three widows before he died in 1714. And his second wife had been three times a widow before Peter married her! His third wife, a widow when
1 The very first marriage that took place in New England was between a widower and a widow, Edward Window ana S White. This was on May 12, 1621.
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she became Mrs. Sargent, outlived Peter and then outlived the man she later married. So that she was finally three times a widow.
Women became " old maids " at an exceed- - ingly early age in colonial New England. Hig- ginson wrote of one " antient maid " who was twenty-five, and John Dunton's classic " Virgin " was only twenty-six, though she had already reached the age to be called a "Thomback." "An old (or Superannuated) Maid," writes this gay Lothario, " is thought such a curse in Bos- ton as nothing can exceed it, and looked on as a Dismal Spectacle, yet she [Comfort Wilkins] by her Good Nature, Gravity and strict Vertue, convinces all that 'tis not her Necessity but her Choice that keeps her a Virgin. . . . She never disguises her self by the Gayetys of a Youthful Dress, and talks as little as she thinks of Love: She goes to no Balls or Dancing Match, as they do who go (to such Fairs) in order to meet with Chapmen. . . . Her looks, her Speech, her whole behaviour are so very chaste, that but once going to kiss her I thought she had blush 'd to death."
Widows made no difficulties about being kissed (see Judge Sewall on this point) and they were often willing to marry almost any decent man who paid court to them. Sometimes their courtship period was shockingly brief, as in the case of Honorable Charles Phelps of Vermont
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and a widow whom he made his wife after an acquaintance of but a single day! Mr. Phelps is characterized in the notice of his wedding as " a gentleman of uncommon polite- ness"; he appears to have been uncommonly impetuous as well. He was sixty at the time of his second wooing, had been bereft of his first wife only a few months, and had met the lady he so swiftly led to the altar while paying court to her aunt. The older woman, after de- clining her suitor's proposal of marriage, ac- commodatingly informed him that she had visiting her just then a niece, another widow, to whom an offer of this kind might be more agreeable. She thereupon led in and intro- duced Mrs. Anstis Eustis Kneeland, aged thirty.
" The young lady, all covered with blushes, and trembling with apprehension, received," we read,1 " the salutation of an old gentleman, large and corpulent, six feet three inches in the clear, in full bottom wig, frizzed and powdered in the most approved style, either for the ju- dicial bench or ladies' drawing-room. The announcement of the question immediately followed. The lady turned pale. Her deli- cacy was shocked. With overpowered sensa- tions she begged to withdraw a moment. Her aunt also gently obtained leave of absence and
1 Id " Under a Colonial Roof-Tree," by Arris S. Huntington.
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followed. But after a short consideration the ladies both returned.
" ' Judge Phelps \ remarked the elder lady, ' we are taken by surprise. The subject is deeply important. My niece, although favorably im- pressed, asks time to consider. She presumes upon your delicacy, and is assured that, if it at all corresponds with your gallantry, you will indulge her a short space for reflection, say one week, after which, if you will honor us with a call, my niece — we, I mean — will be better prepared.'
" ' Preparation ! Dearest madam, do me the favor to commit all preparation to my care. I am so happy in this respect that I have already hinted to a dear friend of mine, a Presbyterian minister — * "
To allow her niece to be married by a Pres- byterian was, however, so much more shocking to the match-maker than to allow her to be married immediately, that the lesser point was at once lost sight of — with the result that this daughter of the ancient and honorable family of Eustis in Boston was made Mrs. Phelps the very next day by a parson of her own choosing.
An even more hasty alliance was that of Gov- ernor Richard Bellingham to Penelope Pelham, who has come down to us as a most upright and virtuous woman, even though her marriage did cause great scandal in the Boston of her day.
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" The young gentlewoman," we read, " was ready to be contracted to a friend of his (Governor Bellingham), who lodged in his house and by his consent had proceeded so far with her, when on a sudden the governor treated with her and obtained her for himself. He excused it by the strength of his affection and that she was not absolutely promised to the other gen- tleman. Two errors more he committed upon it. 1. That he would not have his contract pub- lished where he dwelt, contrary to an order of court. 2. That he married himself contrary to the constant practice of the country. The great inquest presented him for breach of order of court, and at the court following, on the 4th month, the secretary called him to answer the prosecution. But he not going off the bench, as the manner was, and but few of the magis- trates present, he put it off to another time, intending to speak with him privately and with the rest of the magistrates about the case, and accordingly he told him the reason why he did not proceed, viz., being not willing to command him publicly to go off the bench, and yet not thinking it fit he should sit as a judge when he was by law to answer as an offender. This he took ill and said he would not go off the bench except he were commanded."
Bellingham was fifty at the time of this mar- riage, and the lady who precipitously became
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his wife twenty. A similarly arresting disparity in ages is to be found in the case of Governor ■ Benning Wentworth and Martha Hilton, the maid-servant who became his wife. On this occasion, however, a clergyman of the Church of England officiated, that Reverend Arthur Browne of whom both Copley and Longfellow have left us pleasing pictures.
The first girl married in Boston by a minister of the gospel * was Rebecca Rawson, whose story is as romantic — and as sad — as any in the annals of New England. The daughter of Edward Rawson, third secretary of the Massa- chusetts Colony, — who was himself a descend- ant of Sir Edward Rawson, Dorset, England, — Rebecca naturally thought herself quite fit to be the wife of a man who came courting her and who declared himself to be Sir Thomas Hale, Jr., nephew of Lord Chief Justice Hale. They were married July 1, 1679, " in the pres- ence of near forty witnesses, and being hand- somely furnished, sailed for England and safely arrived.
" She went on shore in a dishabille," says the curious old document which preserves this moving tale, " leaving her trunks on board the vessel, and went to lodge with a relation of hers. In the morning early he [her husband] arose,
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took the keys, and told her he would send her trunks on shore that she might be dressed be- fore dinner. He sent the trunks up, and she waited impatiently for the keys till one or two o'clock; but he not coming, she broke open the trunks, and to her inexpressible surprise she found herself stript of everything, and her trunks filled with combustible matter; on which her kinsman ordered his carriage, and they went to a place where she stopt with her husband the night before. She enquired for Sir Thomas Hale, Jr. ; they said he had not been there for some days. She said she was sure he was there the night before. They said Thomas Rumsey had been there with a young Lady, but was gone to his wife in Canterbury; and she saw him no more." '
Thus abandoned, Rebecca set herself to dis- cover some means of income, finally supporting herself and the child which soon came, by " paint- ing on glass." So she struggled on for thirteen years, at the end of which time she determined to return to New England. Her child she left in the care of her sister in England, who had no children of her own, and embarked for Boston by way of Jamaica in a vessel which belonged to one of her uncles. The ship, with its pas- sengers and crew, was swallowed up June 9,
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1692, in the great Fort Royal earthquake. Whittier tells Rebecca's story in considerable detail in his entertaining little piece of imagina- tive writing, " Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal in the Province of Massachusetts Bay." One English marriage custom, which the Puritans, to their honor, steadfastly refused to introduce into the New World, was that by which children were married off, while still of tender age, for the sake of assuring to the families concerned a fortune that might be contingent. From a careful study made of the old court records in the town of Chester, Eng- land, it has been brought out that child-mar- riages, troth-plights, and the like, were ex- ceedingly common in the old country during the seventeenth century. Mary Hewitt of Danton Basset was wedded in 1669, when three years old. John Evelyn, in 1672, was present " at the marriage of Lord Arlington's only daugh- ter, a sweet child if there ever was any, aged five, to the Duke of Grafton." The story is told of one little bridegroom of three who was held up in the arms of an English clergyman and coaxed to repeat the words of the service. Before it was finished, the child said that he would learn no more of his lesson that day, but the parson answered: "You just speak a little more and then go play yon." But when Governor Endicott was approached to marry
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off, at the age of fifteen, little Rebecca Cooper, who had been left an orphan in Salem, and whom Governor Winthrop's sister,' Madam Downing, desired for a daughter-in-law be- cause, as she said frankly, " the disposition of the mayde and her education with Mrs. Endicott are hopefull, her person tollerable, and the estate very convenient ", he, as guard- ian of the child, firmly rejected the proposal: " for these grounds, first: The girle desires not to marry as yet. Sndlee: Shee confesseth (which is the truth) herselfe to be altogether yett unfitt for such a condition, shee beinge a verie girl and but 15 yeares of age. 3rdlie: Where the man was moved to her shee said shee could not like him. 4thlie: You know it would be of ill reporte that a girl because shee hath some estate should bee disposed of soe young, espetialie not having any parents to choose for her. fifthlie: I have some good hopes of the child's coming on to the best thinges."
Governor Winthrop, to whom this letter was addressed, accepted the decision without more ado, and the match did not come off. But he was probably none the less convinced that a girl of fifteen was quite old enough to marry; he himself had been only seventeen when he first took upon himself the duties and respon- sibilities of a husband. But Winthrop was
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quite an extraordinary lover for his time, as some of his letters clearly show.
He had inherited from his mother a nature of very unusual affectionateness, and he was much franker than most of his contemporaries in the expression of his impulses and emotions. Once when he was trying, in a letter to his wife, to be very resigned and spiritual-minded, he interrupts himself to exclaim to her: *' The Love of this present World ! how it bewitches us & steales away our hearts from him who is the onely Kfe & felicitye. O that we could delight in Christ our Lord & heavenly husband as we doe in each other & that his absence were like grievous to us ! " On the eve of his departure to America, he writes: "MY SWEET WIFE, The Lord hath oft brought us together with comfort when we have been long absent; and if it be good for us he will do so still. When I was in Ireland he brought us together again. When I was sick here in London he restored us together again. How many dangers, near death, hast thou been in thyself! and yet the Lord hath granted me to enjoy thee still. If he did not watch over us we need not go over sea to seek death or misery: we should meet it at every step, in every journey. And is not he a God abroad as well as at home? Is not his power and providence the same in New Eng- land as it hath been in Old England? My good
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wife, trust in the Lord, whom thou hast found faithful. He will be better to thee than any husband and will restore thy husband with ad- vantage. But I kiss my sweet wife and bless thee and all ours and rest Thine ever JO. WIN- THROP
"February 14, 1629 — Thou must be my valentine. ..."
One more significant extract from Winthrop's letters just before sailing. From his ship, de- tained near the Isle of Wight, the great man wrote: " Mondays and Fridays, at five of the clock at night, we shall meet in spirit till we meet in person."
Winthrop appears to have been emulating here the tryst between Imogen and Posthumus. For Imogen, it will be remembered, complains that she and her lover had been torn apart
" Ere I could tell him, How I would think on him at certain hours Such thoughts, and such;
... or have charg'd him, At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight, To encounter me with orisons, for then, I am in heaven for him."
This Puritan Posthumus was, however, tn his forty-third year, while his Imogen was thirty-nine and had borne him several chil- dren.
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By 1759 men in search of wives were adopt- ing the " matrimonial advertisement " to help them in their quest. Thus, in the Boston Eve- ning Post of February 28 in that year, may be found the following naive notice:
" To the Ladies. Any young Lady between the Age of Eighteen and twenty three of a Midling Stature; brown Hair, regular Features and a Lively Brisk Eye: Of Good Morals & not Tinctured with anything that may Sully so Distinguishable a Form posessed of 3 or 400£ entirely at her own Disposal and where there will be no necessity of going Through the tiresome Talk of addressing Parents or Guard- ians for their consent: Such a one, by leaving a Line directed for A. W. at the British Coffee House in King Street appointing where an Interview may be had will meet with a Person who flatters himself he shall not be thought Disagreeable by any Lady answering the above description. N. B. Profound Secrecy will be observ'd. No Trifling Answers will be re- garded."
Evidently this advertiser had ante-nuptial debts of which he wished to be free. Debts which a woman brought with her from a pre- vious alliance were sloughed off, in old New England, by the very curious custom known as smock-marriages, or shift-marriages. It was thought that if a bride were married " in her
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shift on the king's highway ", no creditor could pursue her further, and accordingly many a woman was so married to a second husband. Usually, for modesty's sake, this ceremony took place in the evening. Later the bride was permitted on these trying occasions to take her stand in a closet.
One of these closet marriages — that of Major Moses Joy to Widow Hannah Ward, which oc- curred in Newfane, Vermont, in February, 1789 — is graphically described by W. C. Prime in his entertaining book, " Along New England Roads." The bride in this instance stood, with no clothing on, within a closet and held out her hand to the major through a diamond- shaped hole in the door. When the two had been pronounced man and wife, she came forth from the closet, gorgeously attired in wedding garments, which had been thoughtfully placed there for her use. The story of a marriage in which the bride, entirely unclad, left her room by a window at night and donned her wedding garments standing on the top round of a high ladder is also related by Mr. Prime. Hall's " History of Eastern Vermont " tells of a mar- riage in Westminster of that State in which the Widow Lovejoy, while nude and hidden in a chimney recess behind a curtain, took one Asa Averill to be her spouse. Smock-marriages on the public highway were occurring in York,
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Maine, as late as 1774, if we may trust the " His- tory of Wells and Kennebunkport " ; Widow Maiy Bradley, who, clad only in her shift, un- derwent this ordeal on a bitter February day, excited such pity in the officiating minister that he threw his coat over her. A curious variation of this smock-marriage custom is recorded in the " Life of Gustavus Vasa ", the case being that of a man who had been condemned to death on the gallows but was liberated because a woman, clad only in her shift, came forward and married him just as he was about to undergo execution.
As soon as a young man had won from the girl of his choice her promise to be his wife, he set himself to the task of building " a nest for his bird." Second only to the wedding itself in hilarity was the " raising ", in which all of his neighbors and friends assisted, and bf which games and feasting played an important part. A very old custom was for the bride elect to drive one of the pins in the frame of her future home. Thus, in a peculiar sense, the house was hers as well as her husband's. It is related of a Windsor, Connecticut, bride that though she broke her engagement because her affianced partook of more liquor than he could well man- age on the day of their " raising ", she made all quite right by marrying a young man of the same name who purchased from her former
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lover the house in which she had driven a pin.
Another curious old custom connected with getting married was that of " stealing the bride." Those of a couple's acquaintance who were not invited to the wedding would some- times combine, go stealthily to the house where the ceremony was being performed, and watch- ing for a favorable opportunity, would rush in, seize the bride, carry her out, place her on a horse behind one of the party, and race off with her to a neighboring tavern, where music, sup- per, and so on, had previously been bespoken. If the capture and flight were successful, and the captors succeeded in reaching their rendezvous at the tavern without being overtaken by the wedding party, the night was spent in dancing and feasting at the expense of the bridegroom.
Not infrequently a man suffered grievously in the attempt to comply with the sartorial demands of the girl he desired to win. A fairly correct idea of the fashions of the time and of what the woman with standards of style de- manded in the opposite sex may be gleaned from the following contribution to the New ' York Mercury, under date of January 31, 1757. The writer, who appears to have courted in vain the lady of his heart's desire, writes as follows:
" I am a bachelor turned of thirty, in easy
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circumstances, and want nothing but a wife to make me as happy as my neighbours.
" I have long admired a young lady, who, I can with great propriety, call Miss Modish; though for her unreasonable conduct to me she deserves to have her real name exposed in capi- tals. She has a mind capable of every improve- ment and graces of her sex; and were it not for an excessive fondness for gaity and the reign- ing amusements of the town, would be unex- ceptionably lovely.
" To this fair one I have most obsequiously paid my addresses for these last four years; and had I been a Beau, or she less a Belle, I should undoubtedly long since have succeeded; for fashions, cards and assemblies were the only things in which we did not perfectly agree. But whenever these were the subjects of con- versation we were as certainly ruffled and out of temper. On these occasions she would tell me, ' she was astonished I would dispute with her when every genteel person was of her opinion. That one might be as well out of Ike world as out of the mode. For her part, she would never think of marrying a man who was so obstinately awk- ward and impolite, let his other accomplish- ments be ever so refined. I dressed like a clown and hardly ever waited on her to a public di- version; and indeed when I did she was in pain for me, I behaved so queer. She had no notion
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at her age, of sacrificing all the dear pleasures of routs, hops and quadrille for a philosophical husband. No, if I expected to make myself agreeable to her I must learn'' to dress gallant and be smart.' Now, truth is, I can't dance and have an unconquerable aversion to fop- pery. In order to form me to her taste, Miss Modish has always most obstinately insisted on my complying with every idle fashion that has been introduced since my acquaintance with her, under the severe penalty of never hoping for her love if I did not implicitly obey. This, with infinite reluctance and mortification, I have been under the hard necessity of doing. I remember, when high brimmed hats were in the mode, she insisted on an elevation of my beaver of near half an inch with a fierce Cave Null cock. The taste changed, and she would hardly allow me enough to protect my phiz from the inclemency of the weather. My coat, when coatees flourished, was reduced to the size of a dwarf's, and then again increased to the longitude of a surtout. The cuffs in the winter were made open, for the benefit of taking in the cool north weather; in the summer again they were close to prevent the advantage of the refreshing breeze. In the summer I was smothered with a double cravat: in the winter, relieved again with a single cambric neckcloth. It would be tedious to repeat the many sur-
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prising and ridiculous changes I underwent in the outward man; let it suffice to observe that my wig, ruffles, shoes and every little particular, not excepting my breeches, have shared the same unaccountable metamorphosis, all which grievous foppery, my excessive fondness for her made me suffer with Christian resignation; but at last she has fairly exhausted my patience, and we have now come to an open rupture, the occasion of which was this: We happily fell into the old topic of my want of taste and breed- ing. ' You will always,' says she, ' be an old- fashioned creature' (I had unluckily called her My dear.) ' Lord, can't you take pattern after Mr. Foppington? How happy must a lady be in such an admirer! He's always easy and good- humoured, and pays the finest compliments of any gentleman in the universe! How elegantly he dresses! And then he sings like an angel and dances to perfection; and as for his hair, I never saw anything so exquisitely fine. Surely the hair is the most valuable part of a man.'
" From this teasing introduction she took occasion to insist on my wearing my hair; ob- serving that I could not refuse it since I saw how pleasing it would be to her. I used all the arguments I could to divert her from this unrea- sonable request; but she peremptorily declared she would never speak to me again if I denied her so small a favor; it was an insult on the
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prerogative of her sex and a convincing proof that I neither loved her nor merited her esteem. I remonstrated, in vain, that even if I inclined to play the fool, and put my head, which, as it happened, I could not well spare, into the hand of Monsieur Piermont, I was well assured that all the skill and industry of that artist would never change it from its native red, or form a single curl, for that ever since I was six years old, it had been condemned to be close shorn, as incapable of affording a creditable covering to my pericranium. In a passion she desired never to see me more: she would not put up with such contradictions in any gentleman who pretended to be her admirer."
Yet it is altogether probable that he began at once to let his hair grow and was soon using curl-papers at night and the curling- tongs by day in an endeavor to achieve an effect of which his mistress would approve.
That quite as much trouble sometimes en- sued when the lady suddenly required that her lover wear a periwig as when, as in this case, she asked that he should cease to wear one, we learn from the Diary of Samuel Sewall, who, in his old age, was almost forced to take to periwigs — which he abominated — in his efforts to win the widow of his choice.
Dying for love, or living a life of seclusion because of a broken heart, was a source of pride
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in old New England, even among men. A certain Doctor Jones of Hollis, New Hampshire, reputed to have been a native of England and the son of a wealthy British military officer, withdrew to a lonely cabin because he could not marry the girl of his choice and never ven- tured forth save when clad in a long, plaid dressing-gown and wearing a hat with a mourn- ing weed. The record that Jones caused to be placed on his tombstone is
MEMENTO MORI
ERECTED
IN MEMORY
OF DOCTOR
JOHN JONES
Who departed this life July 4th, 1796, in the 65 year of his age.
In youth he was a scholar bright, In learning he took great delight, He was a Major's only son, It was for love he was undone.
A similarly sad tale is suggested by the elab- orately scrolled gravestone in the lower ceme- tery of Hopkinton, New Hampshire. The in- scription on this stone, which no visitor to this quaint and picturesque old village ever fails to search out, is as follows:
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In testimony of sincere affection, This humble monument was erected by E. DARLING, to inform the passing stranger that beneath rests the head of his beloved ELIZA W. PARKER, youngest daughter of Lt. E. P., who died of con- sumption May 11, 1820 JEt. 18.
Invidious Death! How dost thou rend asunder The bonds of nature and the ties of love. In Coelo optamus convenire. We know that her Redeemer livetb.
On the left of this inscription, as the reader faces the stone, is the perpendicularly chiseled sentiment:
" Her eulogy is written on the hearts of her friends " ;
on the right, another line:
"Her friends were — ALL who knew her."
The Baptist burial-ground in East Green- wich, Rhode Island, contains a stone behind which lies still another story of a broken heart. It reads:
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In Memory of
JACOB CAMPBELL
Son of Archibald Campbell
Attorney At Law.
Who Departed This Life March 5th, 1788, in the
28th Year of his Age.
" Oh faithful Memory may thy lamp illume The sacred sepulchre with radiance clear, Soft plighted lore shall rest upon his tomb, And friendship o'er it shed the fragrant tear."
This stone was erected by Eliza Russell, who became attached to young Campbell during his undergraduate days in Rhode Island Col- lege (Brown University), from which he was graduated in 1783. They had never married because he was consumptively inclined; but Eliza nursed her lover until death came to his relief, and after that retired to a darkened room where she stayed for the rest of her life. Only those who could talk about him were admitted to her presence, and the sickness, suffering, and death of Campbell were the only topics on which she would speak.1
Then, as now, however, marriages which really came off were much more common than those whose consummation was thus tragically prevented. The diaries of the day are full of
1 Updike's " Memoirs of the Rhode Island Bar."
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allusions to nuptial celebrations, though they frequently fail to go into such details as we would be glad to see. That genial society man, John Rowe, notes in his diary, under date of November 8, 1764: "Mr. Thos. Amory mar- ried Miss Betty Coffin this evening; there was a great company at old Mr. Coffin's on the occa- sion, and a great dance." January 13, 1767, he records " a wedding frolick " at John Er- ving, Jr.'s, where he " had the pleasure to dance with the bride." His longest account of a wed- ding is that of February 2, 1768. It is as fol- lows:
" This morning Miss Polly Hooper was mar- ried in Trinity Church to Mr. John Russell Spence by the Revd. Mr. Walter. A great concourse of People attended on the Occasion. Dined at Mrs. Hooper's with her, the new Bridegroom & Bride, Mr. Thos. Apthorp, Mr. Robt. Hallowell, Miss Nancy Boutineau, Miss Dolly Murray, Mrs. Murray, Bridemen & Bridemaids, Mr. Murray, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Stephen Greenleaf, Mrs. Greenleaf, the Revd. Mr. Walter, Major Bayard, Mrs. Bayard, Mrs. Rowe, Mr. Thos. Hooper, Mr. John Hooper, Mrs. Eustis, Nath. Apthorp. In the afternoon wee were joyned by Mr. Inman, Miss Suky, John Apthorp Esq. & lady, Dr. Bulfinch & lady, Mr. Amiel, Mr. John Erving & lady. Wee all drank Tea, spent the evening there, had a
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Dance, wee were merry & spent the whole day very clever & agreeable." 1
It would have been pleasant to know what the bride wore on this occasion, of what the collation 8 consisted, and what presents were re- ceived from the distinguished guests. " A white satin night gound " is the somewhat startling costume attributed by Anna Green Winslow to a blue-blooded Boston bride of 1773. But a nightgown was not in those days a garment to wear when sleeping; that was called a rail. The woman's nightgown was a loose, flowing garment resembling the " tea-gown " of the late Victorian era; the nightgown of men was like the dressing-gown of our own day,
Though we have no picture of Polly Hooper's wedding party, we have one, herewith repro- duced, of another Boston wedding celebrated about this same time. One interesting item here to be noted is the pocket hoops worn by the women. No fashion that has come down to us is more ugly than this of pannier-shaped humps on each side of the hips. They were very greatly the vogue in 1750, however, and again in 1780. One portrait of Juliana Penn, daughter-in-law of William Penn, shows her in
1 " Letters and Diary of John Rowe." W. B. Clarke Company,
3 John Andrews mentions " cold ham, cold roast beef, cake, cheese, etc.," as a " very pretty " wedding collation for other nup- tials oi about tfail time.
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pocket Loops which stand out a foot and a half horizontally from the waist! Only mildly de- forming in comparison with this extreme were the hoops which first came into fashion with the opening of the eighteenth century, and which, though regarded as trenching on mo- rality, were quickly tolerated even by the most impeccable of Puritans. When William Pep- perell, in 1723, took to wife Judge Sewall's granddaughter, Mary Hirst, a hooped petti- coat was among the gifts made by the groom to the bride. Hoops, in spite of their ugliness, seem to have been popular with eighteenth century ladies who were " getting married."
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CHAPTER VI
SETTING UP HOUSEKEEPING
THERE was no wedding-trip in the early days, the newly married pair proceeding at once to the business of setting up housekeeping. The home to which the proud young husband conducted his strong-souled bride was at first a rude log cabin or a cellar dug in the hillside. But these temporary habi- tations were soon followed by small wooden houses which, though crude in construction, met sufficiently well the actual needs of the time.
During the first quarter-century of history in the New World, scarcely any enduring houses were built in the country districts; only in mercantile centers like Boston, Portsmouth, Providence, and Newport did people erect houses meant to be permanent. A very inter- esting fact concerning such houses has lately been established by Henry B. Worth : of New Bedford: that in a given period all New Eng- land communities adopted the same style and
1 Register Lynn Historical Society, Vol. XIV.
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shape of dwelling. Thus the approximate age of any surviving old house can readily be de- termined by classifying its architectural style and finding out to which period that style be- longs.
Of course, in the more remote sections, a particular style would linger for many years after it had been abandoned in the larger com- munities; Nantucket, for instance, was build- ing lean-to dwellings forty years after the Massa- chusetts Bay people had advanced beyond this primitive form of home. And occasionally an enterprising householder, wishing to give his bride something better than any other New England bride had ever had, would anticipate a style which was later to become well-known. But, for the most part, the simple rule holds and may be profitably applied by those poking about among old houses in New England, — houses which, thus tested, are frequently found to be considerably less old than their fond owners have believed.
During all the first period of our architectural history, houses had only one room. The Potter house in Westport, Massachusetts, built in 1667, was a one-story dwelling made with a stone end and having a single room eighteen feet square with a loft under the roof. In Rhode Island this was the prevailing style for a generation before 1660. By the time of King
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Philip's War, however, two-story houses had there come into general use, the upper story being devoted to sleeping-rooms, while on the first floor was a single room which served as kitchen, dining-room, and parlor.
The living equipment of such a home as this may be gathered from the inventory of John Smith, a Providence miller, who died late in the seventeenth century. John had a wife and ten children, and he left a landed estate of more than three hundred acres. Yet his house consisted of two rooms — a " lower fiooine " and a " Chamber." In the latter apartment the only pieces of furniture were " two bed studs with the bed and bed in g to them belonging." In the room below were one bedstead and its furnishings, four chairs, " a chest with the Book of Martirs in it, and an old Bible Some lost and some of it tome." Nor were the kitchen utensils much more im- pressive: a brass kettle, a small copper kettle, " an old broken Copper Kettle, a frying pan, a spitt, and a small Grater, a paile and a Cann, and S Iron Potts." For tableware there were " two Small pewter platters, two Basons & three porengers, two quart Glasses, severall wooden dishes, a wooden Bottle, some old trenchers and foure old Spoones." Yet this man's estate was valued at ninety pounds, and he owned, besides, live stock to the extent of
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one steer, two heifers, two bulls, five horses and " 16 swine great and small together." Colonel Nicholas Power, also of Providence, who died about half a century later, and whose style of living was thought to be sumptuous, has come down to us in history by reason of the fact that his house was provided with a " dine- ing room."
Outside of Rhode Island, the lean-to was long the dominant type of New England dwell- ing-house. Between 1675 and 1775, however, that is, from the end of King Philip's War until the outbreak of the Revolution, such houses were frequently amplified so as to in- clude a second ground-floor room, which was used as a parlor. After the Revolution, the full four-apartment house became common, a house, that is, which provided a room for each of the four household purposes of cooking, eating, sleeping, and holding social intercourse. Any house thus lavishly planned could not have been built before the Revolution, ex- perts on this subject declare, unless it stands in some wealthy center.
By the very nature of its construction — its long sloping roof giving incomparable protec- tion against the north winds of winter — the lean-to is the type of old New England house of which most examples still remain. These houses always faced south, regardless of the re-
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lation which might thus be established to the adjacent road. Before 1670, having one room in the first story, they had the chimney at the end. When an additional apartment was de- sired, the house was simply doubled, thus pro- ducing a structure with the chimney in the center.
During the prosperous period which pre- ceded the French and Indian Wars, the gam- brel-roofed house came into popular favor. Many houses built one hundred and seventy- five years ago in this style are still in existence, and in recent years the design has been enthu- siastically revived. A beautiful example of former days was that in which Oliver Wendell Holmes was born, and which stood, until 1883, on the site now occupied by the Law School of Harvard University. Holmes once spoke of his birthplace as " stately enough for college dig- nitaries and scholarly clergymen ", but not by any means " one of those Tory Episcopal- church-goer's strongholds, . . . not a house for his Majesty's Counsellors or the Right Rev- erend successor of Him who had not where to lay his head." By which he meant that it was not in the Craigie House, or Abthorp House class.
The Dutch-cap house, having sometimes a central chimney and in other cases two chim- neys, was chosen as the model for many homes
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built by New Englanders of ample means a few years before and after 1800. Such houses often had a fine parapet rail entirely surround- ing the roof. But a powerful rival to the Dutch- cap dwelling soon appeared in the rectangular, double, two-story house, which had a central hallway extending from front to rear, with two massive chimneys on each side. Between 1790 and 1812 this comfortable, commodious, and durable type of house was the controlling style of home in the big towns of New England; after that, it flourished in many country sec- tions. Subsequent to 1826, substantial dwell- ings built on the generous lines of the Warner House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, multi- plied apace, thus contributing notably to the dignity and impressiveness of many towns in southern New England. This Warner House does not lend itself to Mr. Worth's simple method of classification; for it was built nearly a century ' before its type became dominant. Similarly discouraging to a lover of general- izations is the stone mansion, built in 1636, at Newbury, Massachusetts, by John Spencer, who was at one time governor of the Newport, Rhode Island, colony. The interior of this house closely resembles spacious English man- sions which date from the middle of the six-
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teenth century. So large and roomy as to be capable of holding a great number of people seated, it has an enormous chimney, solid beams of white oak, great window-seats and a vast kitchen — all of which show that the house was designed for people of breeding and wealth. Particularly impressive is the porch facade, with its niche over the rounded portal pediment, in which it was doubtless the in- tention to place the bust of some revered an- cestor of the Spencers.
Of the first home of the greatest of New Eng- land governors, Winthrop, no trace remains to-day. All that we know definitely about this house is where it stood. The Book of Posses- sions, compiled in 1648, or a year or two later, contains the original entries of the earliest re- corded divisions of land in the town of Boston and is, in some sort, the foundation of all titles of real estate within the old-time limits. This defines for us the spot on which Gov- ernor Winthrop decided to plant his home, a choice undoubtedly determined by the spring of water that bubbled up and overflowed just to the north of it, near the old South Meeting- house; this was probably " the excellent spring " to which Winthrop 's attention was called by Mr. Blackstone when solicited to move from Charlestown, where water was scarce. In making a conveyance of this prop-
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erty (in 1643), the governor described it as " that my lott or parcel of land in Boston afore- said called the Greene lyeing by the Spring." From this home, at the corner of the present Washington Street and Spring Lane, the great and good man chosen to be the head of the little company of Puritans wrote to his wife, on March 28, 1631, " I praise God, I want noth- ing but thee and the rest of my family." Like many a later American immigrant, Winthrop made a home in the New World before he felt free to send across the sea for the one woman who had the power to render that home happy. With the help of imagination and the exist- ing records, it is possible to picture roughly this home in which, when Mrs. Winthrop and the children arrived in November, 1631, the First Family of New England set up housekeeping. That the house was built of wood we know; and it was probably two stories high, with gar- rets; its end was toward the main street, its front faced a garden that had been made on the south, and its rear was on Spring Lane. In time an orchard was set out on the eastern half of the land, a row of buttonwood trees was planted parallel with the street, and there was even a lawn — which gave it a bright and cheerful appearance. Lawns appear to have been rare; so that " The Green " was a distin- guishing name for Winthrop 's homestead.
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Very simple and homely was the life lived under this modest roof-tree. Doctor Ellis says: "After the arrival of the colonists, not one of them, however gentle his degree in England, was free from the necessity of manual labor in the field, the forest, and in building and providing for a home. The governor's wife made and baked her own batch of bread, and from her dwelling, near the site of the Old South Church, would take pail in hand and go down to fill it from the spring that still flows under the basement of the Post Office."
Concerning the second Boston home of the Winthrops, on almost this same site, it is possible to gain quite a clear idea from inven- tories which are still extant. That there was a parlor, hall, study, kitchen, and entry (proba- bly in the rear) on the ground floor of this house is very evident from these documents; and up one flight of stairs were to be found a parlor- chamber, hall-chamber, and porch chamber, with above these " a garret over the parlor ", and " a garret over the hall." This hall was some such room as English country magistrates use for the transaction of public business, and probably served also as a dining and living room; it is not to be confused with an entrance hall, usually to be found only in the rear of very old houses and always called an " entry."
From the inventory left by Governor The-
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ophilus Eaton of the New Haven Colony, when he died in 1657, we may gain an excellent idea of how the living-room in a magistrate's house was furnished. For in the Eaton hall were to be found:
A drawing Table & a round table £l. 18s.
A cubberd & 2 long formes, 14s.
A cubberd cloth & cushions, 13s.; 4 setwork cushions 12s. £l. 5.
6 greene cushions, 12s; a greate chair with needle worke. 13s. £1.5.
2 high chaires set work, 20s; 4 high stooles set worke, 26s 8d, £6. 8. 2.
4 lowe chaires set work, 6s 8d, £l. 6. 8.
2 lowe stooles set worke, 10s.
2 Turkey Carpette, £2; 6 high joyne stooles, 6s. £2.6.
A pewter cistern & candlestick, 4s.
A pr of great brass Andirons, 12s.
A pr of smal. Andirons, 6s 8d.
A pr of doggs, 2s 6d.
A pr of tongues fire pan & bellowes, 7s.
These forms and stools of various heights took the place of chairs, which were not very plentiful in New England thus early, the " pew- ter cistern " held water or wine, and in the " cubberd " were kept the pewter plates used daily on the " drawing table." Pewter was in universal use in America until the Revolution,
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when porcelain came to take its place. The " garnish " of pewter, by which was meant a set of pewter platters or chargers and dishes, was a source of great pride to all New Englanders, and the trade of the pewterer was held to be a very influential and respectable one. Henry Shrimpton, a Boston merchant who had made a fortune in pewter, was so proud of the source of his wealth that when his days of opulence ar- rived, he had a great kettle placed on the top of his house as a kind of patent of nobility.
To set up housekeeping without pewter would have been deemed preposterous in the eight- eenth century. But a great many other things were required, too. The kind of wedding out- fit a bride, who was the well-beloved daughter of a fairly wealthy father, had to have at this time, cannot be better indicated than by quo- ting the list of house-furnishings which Judge Sewall ordered from England in 1720,1 when his daughter Judith was married. It reads thus:
Curtains and Vallens for a Bed with Counterpane Head Cloth and Tester made of good yellow waterd worsted camlet with Triming well made and Bases if it be the Fashion. Send also of the same Camlet and Triming as may be enough to make Cushions for the Chamber chairs.
1 See also the list, three pages long, " Household Goods for the Setting-out of a Bride in 1758," quoted in the appendix of Jane de Forest Shelton's " Salt Box House."
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A good fine large Chintz Quilt well made.
A true Looking Glass of Black Walnut Frame of the Newest Fashion if the Fashion be good, as good as can be bought for five or six pounds.
A second Looking Glass as good as can be bought for four or five pounds same kind of frame.
A Duzen of good Black Walnut Chairs fine Cane with a Couch.
A Duzen of Cane Chairs of a Different Figure and a great Chair for a Chamber; all black Walnut.
One bell-metal Skillet of two Quarts, one ditto one Quart.
One good large Warming Pan bottom and cover fit for an Iron handle.
Four pair of strong Iron Dogs with Brass heads about 0 or 6 shillings a pair.
A Brass Hearth for a Chamber with Dogs Shovel Tongs & Fender of the newest Fashion (the Fire is to ly upon Iron).
A strong Brass Mortar That will hold about a Quart with a Pestle.
Two pair of large Brass sliding Candlesticks about 4 shillings a Pair.
Two pair of large Brass Candlesticks not sliding of the newest Fashion about 5 or 6 shillings a pair.
Four Brass Snuffers with stands.
Six small strong Brass Chafing dishes about 4 shillings apiece.
One Brass basting Ladle; one larger Brass Ladle.
One pair Chamber Bellows with Brass Noses.
One' small hair Broom sutable to the Bellows.
One Duzen hard-metal Pewter Porringers.
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Four Duzen Small glass Salt Cellars of white glass; Smooth not wrought, and without a foot.
A Duzen of good Ivory-hafted Knives and Forks.
The pewter porringers were for the little grandchildren, whom Judge Sewall doubtless already saw, in his mind's eye, at supper in Ju- dith's nursery. These porringers always had pretty handles and so admirably combined utility and beauty.
Among the really wealthy, pewter was, of course, only a kitchen necessity, and was often arranged on a dresser which occupied the place of honor in the big room where good things of the table were prepared. The pewter owned by William Burnet, who came to Boston as royal governor July 18, 1728, was valued at £100 2s 6d.
Many a dainty concoction was doubtless prepared in these utensils by the ladies of this governor's household, for cooking was reck- oned among the necessary female accomplish- ments of the day. There were plenty of cook- books on the market, however, for brides whose home training had been neglected. In 1761 we find advertised " The Director Or Young Woman's Best Companion ", which contained " about three hundred receipts in Cookery, Pastry, Preserving, Candying, Pickling, Col-
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taring, Physick, and Surgery." This compre- hensive volume also gave instructions for marketing, directions for carving, and " Bills of Fare for Every Month in the year." A little later appeared " The Complete Housewife, or Accomplish *d Gentlewoman's Companion ", with " upwards of six hundred of the most ap- proved Receipts of Cookery, Pastry, Confec- tionery, Preserving, Pickles, Cakes, Creams, Jellies, Made Wines, Cordials, with Copper Plates curiously Engraven for the regular Dis- position or placing of the various Dishes and Courses, and also Bills of Fare for every,inonth in the year." All this sounds astonishingly modern. And even more amazing is it to en- counter, in a Colonial newspaper, the prototype of the " household budget " supposedly sacred to " domestic science " of the twentieth cen- tury. Yet the Boston News Letter of Novem- ber 18, 1728, prints a careful estimate of what it should cost to keep eight persons in " Families of Midling Figure who bear the Character of being Genteel." And from the context it is evi- dent that this " scheam of expense " is intended to refute other " scheams " previously published — one of which had rashly named two hundred and fifty pounds as the entire annual outlay necessary to such housekeeping. The entries of the November contribution
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For Diet. For one Person a Day
1 Breakfast Id. a Pint of Milk 2d 03
2 Dinner. Pudding Bread meat Roots Pickles Vinegar Salt and Cheese 00
N. B. In this article of the Dinner I would include all the Raisins Currants Suet Flour Eggs Cran- berries Apples & where there are children all their Intermeal Eatings throughout the whole Year. And I think a Gentleman cannot well dine his family at a lower rate than this
3 Supper As the Breakfast 03
4 Small Beer for the Whole Day Winter
& Summer X%
N. B. In this article of the Beer I would likewise include all the Molasses used in the Family not only in Brewing but on other Occasions. For one Person a Day in all ..... . Is. 4 J/fjd
For Whole Family lis
For the Whole Family 365 days. .£ 200 15s. For Butter. 2 Firkins at 68 lb.
apiece, 16d. a lb £ 9 Is
For Sugar. Cannot be less than 10s a Month or 4 weeks espe- cially when there are children £ 6 10s For Candles but 3 a Night Sum- mer & Winter for Ordinary & Extraordinary occasions at
15d for 9 in the lb £ 7 12s 01
For Sand 20s. Soap 40s. Washing Once in 4 weeks at 3s. a time with 3 Meals a Day at 3s. more £ 6 5s.
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For One Maids Wages £ 10
For Shoes after the Rate of each 3 Fair in a year at 0s. a Pair for 7 Persons, the Maid finding her own £ 9 (
In all £849 12s
No House Rents Mentioned nor Bying Carting Pyling or Sawing Fire wood.
No Coffee Tea nor Chocolate
No Wine nor Cyder nor any other Spirituous Liquor
No Pipes Tobacco Spice Nor Sweetmeats
No Hospitality or Occasional Entertaining either Gentlemen Strangers Relatives or Friends
No Acts of Charity nor Contributions for Pious Uses
No Pocket Expenses either for Horse Hire Trav- elling or Convenient Recreations
No Postage for Letters or Numberless other Oc- casions
No Charges of Nursing
No Schooling for Children
No Buying of Books of any Sort or Pens Ink & Paper
No Lyings In
No Sickness, Nothing to Apothecary or Doctor
Nor Buying Mending or Repairing Household Stuff or Utensils
Nothing to the Shnstress nor to the Taylor nor to
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the Barber, nor to the Hatter nor to the shopkeeper & Therefore do Cloaths. ■
The figures here quoted are of far less value to-day than is the insight which the " scheam " affords us as to how a genteel New England family of moderate income lived and spent its money nearly two centuries ago.
In the large towns, and where the table to be supplied was that of people of means, there was a good deal of variety in the food served and in the manner of its preparation. " They have not forgotten," Josselyn wrote, " the English fashion of stirring up their appetites with va- riety of cooking their food." The allusions, in Judge Sewall's diary, to the good things served on his table from time to time fairly make one's mouth water, — especially the desserts, which included " Minc'd Pye, Aplepy, tarts, ginger- bread, sugar' d almonds, glaz'd almonds, honey, curds and cream, sage cheese, Yokhegg in milk chockolett, figgs, oranges, apples, quinces, strawberries, cherries and raspberries."
The traveler Bennet, who was in Boston in 1740, has left us a statement as to the prices then current for the staple foods.
" Their poultry of all sorts are as fine as can be desired, and they have plenty of fine fish of various kinds, all of which are very cheap. Take the butcher's meat all together, in every season
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of the year, I believe it is about twopence per pound sterling; the best beef and mutton, lamb and veal are often sold for sixpence per pound of New England money, which is some small matter more than one penny sterling.
" Poultry in their season are exceeding cheap. As good a turkey may be bought for about two shillings sterling as we can buy in London for six or seven, and as fine a goose for tenpence as would cost three shillings and six- pence or four shillings in London. ...
" Fish, too, is exceeding cheap. They sell a fine fresh cod that will weigh a dozen pounds or more, just taken out of the sea, for about twopence sterling. They have smelts, too, which they sell as cheap as sprats are in London. Salmon, too, they have in great plenty, and those they sell for about a shilling apiece, which will weigh fourteen or fifteen pounds.
" They have venison very plenty. They will sell as fine a haunch for half a crown as would cost full thirty shillings in England. Bread is much cheaper than we have in England, but is not near so good. Butter is very fine and cheaper than ever I bought any in London; the best is sold all summer for threepence a pound."
This, as Weeden points out,1 was the com- fortable diet of the larger towns and of affluent people; salt pork and fish, baked beans, Indian
' " Economic and Social History of New England," p. 541.
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pudding, " boiled dinner ", and pumpkins in every style, constituted the diet of the com- monalty. The use of potatoes and tea came in together in New England. Previous to 1720, the vegetable mainstay of Ireland was almost unknown as an article of food, and even as late as 1750 " should any person have raised so large a quantity of potatoes as five bushels great would have been the inquiry among his neighbors, in what manner he could dispose of such an abundance."
Tea made its way more easily, though previous to 1720 it was scarcely used at all. To be sure, traces may be found of copper tea- kettles in Plymouth early in the eighteenth century; but the kettles most generally used were cast-iron ones, made in considerable quanti- ties at Carver, Massachusetts, between 1760 and 1765. Lewis, in his " History of Lynn *', records that " when ladies went to visiting parties, each one carried her tea cup, saucer and spoon. The tea cups were of the best china, very small, containing as much as a com- mon wine glass." A letter written in 1740 de- clares: " Tea is now become the darling of our women. Almost every little tradesman's wife must set sipping tea for an hour or more in the morning, and it may be again in the afternoon if they can get it. They talk of bestowing thirty or forty shillings upon a tea equipage
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as they call it. There is the silver spoons, silver tongs, and many other trinkets that I cannot name." Women's weaknesses always get into print, and tea-drinking, of course, came in for its share of lampooning. Witness the follow- ing, which seems to me well worth quoting as an example of the grotesque and highly in- volved humor of this period. I copy it from the Boston Evening Post of October 12, 1767:
Know all Men (and Women) by these Presents That I, Jane Teakettle, in the Township of Green Tea and County of Bohea and Province of Loaf Sugar, do owe and stand indebted unto Margery Tea-Pot, in the Township of Cream-Pot, in the County of Bread and Butter and province of Loaf Sugar aforesaid, in the Sura of Fifty Pounds Lawful Money, in Cups and Saucers, to be paid unto said Margery Tea-Pot, on or before the Tenth Day of Hot-Water next ensuing. As witness my Hand this Ninth Day of MUk-Bisket, and in the Fifty first year of Gossips Reign, 1738.
Jane Teakettle X Sealed and delivered in Presence of us,
Jane Slop-Bowl
Bridget Sugar-Tongs,
Dorothy Tea-Spoons
Yet when giving up tea could do any good women ' gave it up gladly. " The following
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agreement ", we read in the Boston Evening Post of February 12, 1770, " has lately been come into by upwards of 300 Mistresses of Families in this Town; in which Number the Ladies of the highest rank and Influence, that could be waited upon in so short a Time, are included:
Boston, January 31, 1770. At a time when our invaluable Rights and Priv- ileges are attacked in an unconstitutional and most alarming Manner, and as we find we are reproached for not being so ready as could be desired, to lend our Assistance, we think it our Duty perfectly to concur with the true Friends of Liberty in all Meas- ures they have taken to save this Abused Country from Ruin and Slavery. And particularly, we join with the very respectable Body of Merchants and other Inhabitants of this Town, who met in Faneuil Hall the 23d of this Instant, in their Resolutions, totally to abstain from the Use of Tea; And as the greatest Part of the Revenue arising by Virtue of the late Acts, is produced from the Duty paid upon Tea, which Revenue is wholly expended to support the American Board of Commissioners; WE, the Subscribers, do strictly engage, that we will totally abstain from the Use of that Article (Sickness ex- cepted) not only in our respective Families, but that we will absolutely refuse it, if it should be offered to us upon any Occasion whatsoever. This Agreement we cheerfully come into, as we believe the very distressed Situation of our Country requires
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it and we do hereby oblige ourselves religiously to observe it, till the late Revenue Acts are repealed.
The coming together of Colonial women in this spirited mariner was an even more revolu- tionary step than was taken by the men when they determined to oppose the King's forces with arms. Mrs. Hutchinson had hypnotized the women of her day into hatching a heresy and there had been special prayer-meetings for women in Whitefield's time. But for women to assemble with any other than a purely religious motive was an unheard-of thing. It is exceedingly significant, too, that the avowed object of their organization was to abandon one of the very few pleasures which were theirs. Tea-drinking meant far more to women then than it does now. Not lightly, by any means, did one abstainer write:
" Farewell the teaboard with its gaudy equipage Of cups and saucers, creambucket, sugar tongs, The pretty tea-chest, also lately stored With Hyson, Congo and best double-fine. Full many a joyous moment have I sat by ye Hearing the girls tattle, the old maids talk
scandal, And the spruce coxcomb laugh at — maybe —
nothing. . . ."
But, though tea-drinking was abandoned, the social hours at which tea had been the
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beverage continued. For was there not more and graver matter than ever to discuss? Sub- stitutes for tea had accordingly to be found, and, since none of these proved very satisfactory, — though Liberty Tea and Labrador Tea were loudly praised in the patriotic public press — coffee soon came to be consumed in great quantities. Thus we find Mrs. John Adams writing, on July 31, 1777, after the war had actually begun:
" There is a great scarcity of Sugar and coffee, articles which the female part of the State is very loath to give up, especially whilst they consider the great scarcity occasioned by the merchants having secreted a large quantity. . . . It was rumored that an eminent stingy wealthy merchant (who is a bachelor) had a hogshead of coffee in his store which he refused to sell the committee under six shillings per pound. A number of females, some say a hundred, some say more, assembled with a cart and trunks, marched down to the warehouse and demanded the keys which he refused to deliver. Upon which one of them siezed him by his neck and tossed him into the cart. Upon his finding no quarter he delivered the keys when they tipped up the cart and discharged him; then opened the warehouse, hoisted out the coffee themselves, put [it] into the trunks and drove off. It is reported that he had personal chas-
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tisements among them, but this, I believe was not true. A large concourse of men stood amazed, silent spectators of the whole transac- tion."
Which would seem to prove that there were militant women in America more than a century before Mrs. Pankhurst saw the light of day in England!
In the sparsely settled districts, giving up tea involved little sacrifice, for the beverage was not much used there thus early. A very good idea of the living conditions of prosperous farmer-folk in Rhode Island, about the middle of the eighteenth century, is gained from the will of Robert Hazard, who, in providing for his " Dearly beloved wife ", mentions specif- ically what seemed to him enough to make her comfortable for the rest of her life: fifty pounds a year, " four cows to be kept summer and win- ter yearly and every year ", " a negro woman named Phebee", " one Rideing Mare, Such a one as She Shall Chuse Out of all my Jades, with a new Saddle and new Bridle." She was to have an allowance' of wood, beef, and pork yearly, the " beef to be Killed and Dressed, and brought to her into her house; " she was given " Six Dung-hill fowl ", and " six Geese with the privilege of raising what Increase She Can, but Shall put of [off] all of them to Six by the last of January yearly." Her furniture was to
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consist of one feather-bed, with six chairs, " two Iron pots one brass Kettle, two pair of Pott- hooks, two Trammels ", various pewter dishes and platters, some large, some " middling size ", pewter basins, and silver spoons. One piece of CambUtt was also given, " Saving so much of it as I give to my Daughter Mary to Make her a Cloak ", of linen the piece " called the fine piece ", also a piece of fine worsted cloth, worth forty pounds of wool yearly, and a " linnen wheel, and a Woollen Wheel." She was to have two rooms, " one a fire Room, the other a Bed room Such as She Shall Chuse in either of my two Houses ", and the " Improve- ment of a quarter of an Acre of Land where She Shall Chuse it to be Well fenced for her Use yearly." Andirons, fire-shovel, and warming- pan are also assured to the widow by this will. 1 Whether the " Rideing Mare " mentioned was a Narragansett pacer does not appear, but this would have been very natural, for these famous horses were raised in Narragansett and were very highly regarded. A large number of them were exported annually and still more sent to the West Indies and to Virginia. So great was their value that finally all the good mares were sold from out the country, thus repeating, as Caroline Hazard points out, the old fable of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
1 " College Tom," by Caroline Hazard, p. 32.
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These pacers had great endurance and were capable of carrying heavy burdens in addition to one or two riders. They had speed, too. Races which they ran on what is now Narragan- sett Pier beach are enthusiastically described by many an old writer.
Improvements in every-day living came very slowly in the country districts of New England, for the descendants of both Pilgrims and Puri- tans were content for many years to adhere to old-fashioned ways. Thus a traveler alight- ing at a New England farmhouse early in the nineteenth century would have encountered conditions nearly the same as those which ex- isted among people of the same class in old colony times. He would have found the great chimney with its open fireplace, and real chim- ney-corner, its splint-bottom chairs, spinning- wheel, and loom. For refreshment he would have been offered a mug of cider or a cana- kin of rum. At dinner would be seen a boiled leg of salt pork, or boiled ribs of salt beef, with mustard or horseradish, pickles, and hot vegetables. The table would be set with plain delft and with steel knives. Rye and Indian bread would be served on a wooden trencher. Pumpkin pie would very likely be the dessert. Tumblers there might have been (so called from the fact that no matter how you laid them down, they balanced themselves back into an upright
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position) ; and, by this time, there would proba- bly have been rude steel forks, thus making unnecessary the use, for toilet purposes, of the ewers and basins which played so important a part in the period when fingers were used to hold the food on the plate or convey it to the mouth. If our traveler stayed the night and the time were winter, he would go up to a freezing attic, undress with only a braided woolen mat be- tween himself and the icy floor and stretch himself to rest on a feather bed placed on a sack of straw. The only " spring " in his couch would come as a result of the tautness with which the cords under the feathers had been stretched across the solid maple bedstead. Home-made blankets and a blue woolen cover- let, woven in the family loom, would consti- tute his coverings, and in the morning he would make his simple toilet down before the " sink " of the lean-to next the kitchen — after he had broken the ice in the bucket in order to get his meager supply of water. The tooth-brush was a luxury still unknown in primitive circles; regular ablutions of any kind and to any extent were, indeed, somewhat of an innovation. In- asmuch as we find the author of " Les Loix de la Galanterie " counseling in 1644: "Every day one should take pains to wash one's hands and one should also wash one's face almost as often ", this is not greatly to be wondered at.
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French gallantry having so recently begun to wash its face daily, New England yeomanry could not be expected to have progressed far, only a century and half later, in delicate care of the person.
For the sake of promoting good feeling, how- ever, we will assume that our traveler comes to breakfast as clean as the manners of the time demanded. What would he find spread out there for his delectation? Ham and eggs very likely, or salt fish prepared with cream, or bean porridge made from stock to which a ham bone had contributed liberally, or cold corned beef with hot potatoes. Usually there was hot bread (called " biscuits ", though more nearly of the muffin variety), and always there were sauces and pickles.
The " boiled dinner " to which, on hotel menus, the descriptive words " New England " are still universally appended, was, as a matter of fact, the universal jrihce de resistance of the comfortable but uncultivated householder of olden times. It was prepared in a single great pot, the meat being put in first, and then — at intervals properly calculated to turn the whole thing out cooked, just as it should be, the minute the big clock in the corner should strike the hour of noon — were added potatoes, beets, squash, turnip, and cabbage, with very likely a bag of Indian pudding into the bargain. Such
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a dish was a meal of itself, neither dessert nor bread being regarded as necessary to its com- pleteness.
The " pudding " of New England was often by way of being a " sweet " in that it was made of molasses and butter as well as of Indian corn. And, strange to relate, it was served first! Hence the old saying: " I came in season — in pudding time." At the house of John Adams there was served, as late as 1817, a dinner whose first course consisted of this species of Indian pudding, the second of veal, bacon, neck of mutton, and vegetables. On gala occasion there were much more elaborate dishes of course, as we have seen to be the case at the birth celebrations conducted by Judge Sewall. And, on Saturday, everybody ate fish for din- ner. This universal eating of fish was in order that the fisheries might not fail of support; Saturday rather than Friday was chosen, be- cause the Papists ate fish on Friday. Judge Sewall frequently speaks with unction of his Sat- urday dinner of fish; codfish balls on Sunday morning are a cherished New England survival.
Pumpkins were very highly regarded as food.
" We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it were not for pumpkins we should be un- done,"
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sang a native poet. Madam Knight met this vegetable stand-by often on her journey, — of which we shall hear in a later chapter, — in the form of " pumpkin sauce " and " pumpkin bred." By Johnson's time New Englanders had " Apple Pear and Quince Tarts " to sup- plement their former pumpkin pies. Johnny- cake, that other distinctively New England dish, was really journey-cake, so called from the fact that it was the mainstay of our fore- fathers when they went on long horseback trips. The Indian corn from which it was made was carried in a pouch and mixed, before eating, with snow in winter and water in summer. Johnny-cake was held to be the most sustain- ing form of food that could possibly be trans- ported in condensed form.
Before leaving the pumpkin, however, note must be made of its sartorial function in the New England of early days, from which the epithet " pumpkin-head " was derived. In the lively " History of Connecticut," compiled by the Reverend Samuel Peters, this term is thus explained: "It originated from the 'Blue Laws ' which enjoined every male to have his hair cut round by a cap. When caps were not to be had they substituted the hard shell of a pumpkin, which being put on the head every Saturday, the hair is cut by the shell all round the head. Whatever religious virtue is sup-
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posed to be derived from this custom, I know not; but there is much prudence in it: first, it prevents the hair from snarling; secondly it saves the use of combs, bags and ribbons; thirdly the hair cannot incommode the eyes by falling over them; and fourthly, such per- sons as have lost their ears for heresy, and other wickedness, cannot conceal their misfortune and disgrace."
In an age when hair-cutting was thus crudely conducted and bathing only occasional, table manners naturally would be pretty primitive for the most part. We should be shocked to- day if, when we sat down to dinner a guest should pull a clasp knife out of his pocket, cut his meat into small pieces, and then feed him- self by conveying these pieces to his mouth with his fingers. Yet this was undoubtedly the way the early Puritans ate. Hence the proverb: "fingers were made before forks", and the great store of napkins which, with huge ewers for water, formed such an important part of every housekeeping outfit.
As the years passed, certain codes developed to govern the use of these household necessities. In a little book compiled by Eleazar Moody, a Boston schoolmaster, are embalmed rules for the conduct of children at the meeting- house, at home, at the table, in company, in " discourse ", at the school, when abroad, and
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when among other children, which shed a flood of light upon the manners of the period. At no time might a child approach its parents without a bow; and every child was expected to bear the reproach of parents, " without mur- muring or sullenness, even when such reproofs or corrections be causeless or undeserved." In the division given over to table manners, Mr. Moody directs: " Smell not of thy Meat, nor put it to thy Nose; turn it not the other side upward to view it upon thy Plate or Trencher; Throw not anything under the Table. . . . Foul not the napkin all over, but at one corner only. . . . Gnaw not Bones at the Table but clean them with thy knife (unless they be very small ones) and hold them not with a whole hand, but with two Fingers. When thou blowest thy Nose, let thy handkerchief be used," Mr. Moody counsels further and adds: " Spit not in the Room, but in the Corner, — and rub it with thy Foot."
-Heavy drinking was the common custom of old New England. Baron Riedesel wrote: " most of the males have a strong passion for strong drink, especially rum and other alcoholic beverages," and John Adams declared: " if the ancients drank wine as our people drink rum and cider it is no wonder we hear of so many possessed with devils." It is interesting to note that, according to one of Adams' descend-
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ants, that worthy spoke as an expert on the consumption of strong drink. To the end of the great man's life, we are told, " a large tank- ard of hard cider was his morning draught be- fore breakfast.**
Brewing delectable drinks was held to be a nice accomplishment, and the best way to prepare a punch, an egg-nogg, or a posset was regarded as a necessary part of every lady's ed- ucational outfit. The Weekly Post-Boy for 1743 gives the following " Receipt for - all Young Ladies that are going to be married, to make a Sack Posset: "
" From fam'd Barbados on the western Main Fetch sugar half a pound; fetch Sack from
Spain A Pint, and from the East Indian Coast Nutmeg, the Glory of our Northern Toast. O'er flaming Coals together let them heat, Till the all conquering Sack dissolve the Sweet. O'er such another Fire set Eggs twice ten, New born from foot of Cock and Rump of Hen; Stir them with steady Hand, and Conscience
pricking, To see th' untimely Fate of Twenty Chicken. From shining Shelf take down your brazen
SkiUet, A quart of milk from gentle Cow will fill it, When boil'd and cool'd put Milk and Sack to tt . Egg. Unite them firmly like the tripple League;
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Then covered close, together let them dwell Till Miss twice sings — You must not Kiss
and tell. Each Lad and Lass snatch up their murdering
Spoon, And fall on fiercely like a Starved Dragoon."
To brew delectable drinks, to read, and to sew constituted all the desirable female ac- complishments. Writing was long held to be a work of supererogation in a woman. Scarcely one woman in a dozen could write in 1700, and of those whose names appear in the recorded deeds of the early part of the eighteenth century, less than forty per cent, sign except by use of a mark.
In humbler households, the goodwife was, in her own person, a dozen different workers. For one thing, she was a nurse, raising in her little botanical garden lovage, sage, saffron, and the other herbs so likely to be needed during sickness. She could spin, too, and so set an example when it was decided to punish England by wearing only garments of home- spun manufacture. Providence, Rhode Island, was the scene of an organization formed for this purpose in 1766. Then seventeen young ladies, called the Daughters of Liberty, met at the house of Deacon Ephraim Bowen and spun all day for the public benefit. The next day their numbers had so increased that the court-
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house was none too large for them. At about the same time, another band of Daughters gathered at Newport, this group including all the beautiful and brilliant girls for which that town was then so celebrated. Because these girls were pretty — and because their cause was just — the president and the first graduating class of Brown University, then called Rhode Island College, wore clothing at the Commence- ment of 1769 made wholly of American home- spun.
Far and wide throughout New England, this movement on the part of the women spread, and in Newbury, Beverly, Ipswich, and Row- ley spinning matches were held, one of which is thus described in the Boston News-Letter:
" Rowley. A number of thirty-three respecta- ble ladies of the town met at sunrise [the month of July] with their wheels to spend the day at the house of the Rev'd Jedediah Jewell in the laudable design of a spinning match. At an hour before sunset, the ladies then appearing neatly dressed, principally in homespun, a polite and generous repast of American production was set for their entertainment, after which, there being present many spectators of both sexes, Mr. Jewell delivered a profitable dis- course from Romans XII. 2: Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord."
We need not follow the many sermons
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preached on similar texts to these patriotic women, but we must not deny ourselves the pleasure of some of the " poetry " which re- flects the revolutionary spirit of the times. In the Massachusetts Gazette of November 9, 1767, may be found these lines:
" Young ladies in town and those that live round Let a friend at this season advise you. Since money's so scarce and the times growing worse, Strange things may soon hap and surprise you. First, then, throw aside your high top knots of pride, Wear none but your own country linen. Of economy boast. Let your pride be the most To show cloaths of your own make and spinning."
These " cloaths of their own make and spinning " formed a very important part of a young housekeeper's outfit. For the house- linen of early days was largely home-made, " linen " always signifying exactly that, while " holland " meant whatever was imported. Home-made table-cloths were of diaper pat- terns, — two widths, a yard wide, sewed to- gether. The best ones would probably be of holland. By an unwritten law the girl supplied
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the bed and bedding,1 even to the curtains and valances; but the duty of procuring the bed- steads devolved upon the man.
Having spun the flax and wool and ac- cumulated in her linen chest enough house- linen to last the family a long time, a young housekeeper could turn her attention to the • matter of making pretty clothes for herself. In those days the art of embroidery played an im- portant role; " neck-handkerchiefs and ruf- fles were wrought with marvellous stitches, and a long band of fine white linen was worked with many soft-colored crewels, in a trailing pattern of vines, flowers, and butterflies that would make the petticoat it was to border the envy of all beholders."
For the styles the house-mother of moderate means examined the wardrobe of a doll which had been decked out in the latest mode. From the New England Weekly Journal of July 2, 1788, I copy the following:
" To be seen at MRS. HANNAH TEATTS, Mantua-maker at the head of Summer street, Boston, a Baby drest after the newest fashion of Mantuas and Night-Gowns and everything belonging to a Dress, lately arrived in Capt. White from London, any ladies that desire to
had a supply of blankets, also, white and blue and yellow plaids." " Salt Box House."
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see it, may either come or send & she will be ready to wait on 'em, if they come to the House it is Five Shillings, and if she waits on them it is Seven Shillings."
Would that some diarist with a lively pen had left us a description of the women she met - examining the garments displayed by Madam Teatts! Were the styles in hats introduced in the same way, we wonder? If so, there must once have been a day when a doll, either in the Teatts establishment or elsewhere, first bowed its head under the burden of a calash, that very distinctive head-covering whose virtues were thus ambiguously celebrated in a Norwich newspaper of 1780:
" Hail, great Calash! o'erwhelming veil. By all-indulgent Heaven To sallow nymphs and maidens stale, In sportive kindness given."
More sunshade than bonnet, this extraordi- nary production l is said to have been invented by the Duchess of Bedford in 1765. It was usually made of thin green silk, shirred on strong lengths of rattan or whalebone, which had been placed two or three inches apart. Sometimes it was finished with a narrow cape. It received its name from the old-fashioned
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chaise or calash, which it greatly resembled when it had been drawn out over the face by pulling narrow ribbon bridles fastened to its edge on top. Calashes were frequently a foot and a half in diameter, having been originally designed to form an adequate covering for the high-dressed and be-wigged heads of the period. The " lust for wigs," it must be understood, had pretty nearly everybody in its grip by this time. The Apostle John Eliot had denounced wigs eloquently, Reverend Mr. Noyes had thundered about them in the pulpit, and the legislature of Massachusetts had made a law against them. Yet Governor Barefoot of New Hampshire wore a periwig as early as 1670, John Wilson and Cotton Mather adopted this fashion in their turn, and in 1676 Wait Win- throp wrote to his brother in New London: " I send herewith the best wig that is to be had in ye countrye. Mr. Sergeant brought it from England for his own use and says it cost him two guineas and six shillings, and that he never wore it six howers. He tells me will have three pounds for it." By 1716 the fashion of wearing wigs had become well-nigh universal among men, and we read in the Boston News-Letter of August 14, 1729: "Taken from the shop of Powers Mariott Barber, a light Flaxen Naturall Wigg Parted from the forehead to the Crown. The Narrow Ribband is of a Red Pink Colour.
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The Caul is in Rows of Red Green & White." The newspapers of this period are full, indeed, of advertisements concerning barbers who will dress wigs, wigs which are for sale, and wigs which have been lost or stolen.
Hawthorne gives this partial list of wigs: The tie, the brigadier, the spencer, the atbemarle, the major, the ramillies, the grave full-bottom, and the giddy feather-top. To which might be added many other varieties of the wig family. The sequence of fashions in this particular is very interesting to trace as reflected in the por- traits of Smibert, Blackburn, Copley and Gil- bert Stuart.
Even the children wore on their heads these expensive and uncomfortable deformities. And young women, after having so maltreated their hair that they had very little of it left, were very glad to take refuge in wigs. Eliza South- gate of Scarborough, Maine, writes her mother from Boston, where she was visiting in 1800, that she must have " a 5 dollar bill by the post immediately " in order to buy a wig in time to wear to the next Assembly.1 " I must either cut my hair or have one," she insists, " for I cannot dress it at all stylish. Mrs. Coffin bought Eleanor's and will get me one just like it; how much time it will save — in one year we could save it in pins and paper, besides
1 " Letters of Eliia Southgate Bowne: " Charles Scribner'a Sons.
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the trouble. At the Assembly I was quite ashamed of my head for nobody has long hair."
The useful puppet was probably employed to show fashions in wigs, as well as in " mantuas" and " night-gowns."
To conclude that all dressmaking was done in the house, from patterns and styles thus acquired, would, however, be a mistake. Well- to-do families had long patronized tailors, and that quite extensively, as the following bill of William Sweatland for work done for the family of Jonathan Corwin of Salem clearly shows. Corwin was the judge who tried the Salem witches; his name is inextricably associated with the sad end of Rebecca Nourse of Dan- vers, whom he sent to the gallows, July 19, 1692. His tailor's bill in manuscript may be seen in the library of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
d.
Sept. 29, 1679. To plaiting a gown for
Mrs 3
To makeing a Childs Coat 6
To makeing a Scarlett petticoat with
Silver Lace for Mrs 9
For new makeing a plush somar for
Mrs 6
Dec. 22, 1679. For making a Somar for
your Maide 10
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£. a. d. Mar. 10, 1670. To a yard of Callico 8
To 1 Douzen and J^ of silver buttons 1 6
To thread 4
To makeing a broad cloth hatte 14 .
To making a haire Camcottcoat 9
To making new halfsleeves to a silk
Coascett 1
March 2fi To altering and fitting a
paire of Stays for Mrs 1
Ap. 3, 1680, to makeing a Gowne for
ye Maide 10
May 20. For removing buttons of ye
coat 6
Juli 25, 1680. For makeing two Hatts
and Jacketts for your two sonnes 19
Aug. 14. To makeing a white Scarson-
nett plaited Gowne for Mrs 8
To makeing a black broad cloth Coat
for yourselfe 9
Sep. 3, 1680, To makeing a Silke Laced
Gowne for Mrs 1 8
Oct. 7, 1680, to makeing a Young
ChildsCoate 4
To faceing your Owne Coate Sleeves 1
To new plaiting a petty Coat for Mrs. 1 6
Nov. 7. To makeing a black broad
Cloth Gowne for Mrs 18
Feb. 26, 1680-1 To searing a Petty
Coat for Mrs 6
Sum is, £ 8 4s lOd
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The Corwin family, being of the magistracy, might wear elegant garments without let or hindrance. But if they had not been " gentle- folk," such clothes would have been forbidden them by law. For there was sumptuary legis- lation in these early days. In October, 1651, the court of Massachusetts declared that " in- tolerable excesse and bravery hath crept in upon us and especially among people of mean condition " and registered their " utter detes- tation and dislike that men of mean conditions and callings should take upon them the garb of gentlemen by wearing gold or silver lace, or buttons or points at their knees, to walk in great boots, or women of the same ranke, to wear silk or tiffany hoods or scarfs, which, though allowable to persons of greater estates, or more liberal education, they judge it intol- erable in persons of such like condition." Whereupon it was ordered that with the excep- tion of " magistrates, or any publick officer of this jurisdiction, their wives and children, mili- tary officers or soldiers, or any other whose education or employment have been above the ordinary degree, or whose estates have been considerable, though now decayed, or who were not worth two hundred pounds, no person should transgress this law under penalty of ten shil- lings."
This law was inspired by belief in the value
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of class distinctions. From the beginning, in New England, there were three distinct classes: the gentry, the yeomanry, and the tradesfolk; and the intention was to preserve these dis- tinctions here just as they have been preserved in the motherland. Ship-building and the com- merce that followed in its wake, manufacturing, and the New England keenness in bargains and business soon availed, however, to break down classes; and presently the Revolution raised the lowly and leveled those of high estate in a highly disconcerting fashion.
Then it was that servants began to be help — " hired help " as the phrase goes in New England to this day.
Most of the service during the early colonial period was performed by " redemptioners," and contemporary literature is full of interest- ing allusions to the terms of their contracts. Lechford tells us in his " Note-books " of Elizabeth Evans, who came from Ireland to serve John Wheelwright, minister, for three years, her wages being three pounds per annum and passage paid, and of Margery Bateman, who, after five years of service in Charlestown, was to receive a she-goat to help her in starting in life. In the Boston News-Letter may be found an advertisement in which Robert Gallon offers " a few boy servants indentured for seven years and girls for four years ", while " Mrs.
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Johnson's Captivity " tells of apprenticed serv- ants bound for a term of years who, in 1730, were sold from ships in Boston. As late as August 1, 1817, indeed, Samuel Breck, a Bos- Ionian then living in Philadelphia, wrote with no sense of shame:
" I went on board the ship John from Amster- dam . . . and I purchased one German Swiss for Mrs. Ross and two French Swiss for my- self. ... I gave for the woman $76, which is her passage-money, with a promise of $20 at the end of three years if she serves me faith* fully; clothing and maintenance of course. The boy had paid twenty-six guilders toward his passage-money which I agreed to give him at the end of three years; in addition to which I paid fifty-three dollars and sixty cents for his passage, and for two years he is to have six weeks schooling each year."
Breck had grown up in a community in which indentured servants were an established in- stitution.
From the Boston Evening Post of September 28, 1767, I copy the following:
TEN DOLLARS REWARD
Ran away from Capt. Aaron Willard, of Lan- caster, in the County of Worcester, on the 28th of June last, an indentured servant named Patrick
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Ryon, a Native of Ireland; he is a likely well- limbed Lad, about 20 years of Age, 5 Feet 9 inches high or thereabouts, of a ruddy fair Complexion, and wears his own Hair; Had on when he went away a brownish cloth colour'd Coat, trimmed with metal buttons, a Jacket of the same Colour, without Sleeves, trimmed with yellow metal Buttons, a pair of mixt blue and white Stockings, and also carried with him a pair or two of Trowsers made of Tow Cloth not whitened.
Whoever will take up the aforesaid Servant and bring him to his Master, or secure him in any of his Majesty's Gaols, and give information thereof to his said Master, shall be entitled to Ten Dollars Reward, and all necessary Charges paid by Aaron Willard, jun.
All masters of Vessels and others are hereby cau- tioned against concealing or carrying off said Servant, as they would avoid the Penalty of the Law.
These advertisements make clear — and there is plenty of other evidence besides — that the time of the indentured servant belonged abso- lutely to the master, and that he had the right to do with it what he would. Slaves, too, as well as bond servants, were held in old New England. I have found negroes advertised in the same newspaper list with tea, velvet, and candles; and Randolph could report two hundred slaves here in 1676.1 The Quakers protested vigor-
P&pen," II., 219.
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ously against the slave-trade in Rhode Island, yet Newport continued to be the receiving and disbursing center for most of the negroes brought from Guinea and Madagascar.
Not only were negroes of both sexes bought and sold,1 but Indians also appear to have been leased out as household drudges. In the New England Weekly Journal of March 17, 1729, I find advertised:
"Dt3&~An Indian Woman's Time for about 2 Years, who can do all sorts of Household Work."
It was quite a common thing, in the early days, to whip servants who were particularly annoying, and many instances can be found of a master who had to be fined for over-indul- gence in this practice. In Boston and other towns, accordingly, commissioners were elected who had power to sentence, for whippings ex- ceeding ten stripes, servants who behaved " disobediently and disorderly toward their mas- ters and governours." Hartford, Connecticut, had a similar law, and Mrs. Earle quotes the case of Susan Coles of that town, who, " for her rebellious caredge towards her mistris, is to be sent to the house of correction, and be kept to hard labour and coarse dyet, to be brought forth
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the next Lecture Day to be publiquely corrected and so to be corrected weekly until Order be given to the Contrary."
Yet treating maids " as members of the family " did not seem to produce the desired result. John Wynter, the head agent of the settlement at Richmonds Island, Maine, gives a very bad character, in 1689, to a maid there employed, and this notwithstanding the fact that " for a yeare & quarter or more she lay with my daughter oppon a good feather bed."
In the old days, as to-day, the servant prob- lem bore most heavily on those who lived " out of town." Governor Winthrop's daughter, Mary, who in 1633 was married to the eldest son of Deputy-Governor Dudley and went to live in Ipswich, Massachusetts, had very great difficulty in conducting the affairs of her house- hold and is repeatedly found beseeching her mother to send her " a good lusty servant." On April 28, 1636, she writes agitatedly: "I am forced to crave your help as speedily as maye be, my mayd being to goe away upon May day and I am like to be altogether destitute. I cannot get her to stay a month longer. . . . My husband is willing to stand what you shall think meet to give. ... I desire that the mayd that you provide me may be one that hath been used to all kinds of work and must refuse none. If she have skill in the dayrie I shall be the
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gladder." When such a " inayd " was secured and sent down, however, she proved to be not at all the treasure desired though " at her first coming she carried herself dutifully as be- came a servant. But since through mine and my husband's forbearance towards her for small faults she hath got such a head, and is growen soe insolent that her carriage towards us, es- pecially myselfe, is unsufferable. If I bid her doe a thing shee will bid me doe it myselfe, and she says how she can give content as well as any servant but she will not, and sayes if I love not quietnes I was never so fitted in my life for shee would make me have enough of it. ... If I tell my husband of her behavior to me, upon examination shee will denie all that she hath done or spoken; so that we know not how to proceed against her."
Yet they did proceed in precisely the same way that hundreds of harassed housewives have since proceeded: they "hired another maide " and went through the whole perform- ance da capo.
Servants being a more or less unknown quan- tity, then as now, the question arises: How did our great-great-grandmothers manage to pre- serve the beautiful china which has come down to us through so many generations? The answer is that the Puritan housekeeper kept her china by not using it.
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In cabinets and cases with glass doors, on shelves, and in racks made especially for it, on mantelpieces, tops of cupboards, cases, presses, and chests of drawers were ranged these precious relics. They did not, by any means, find their way daily to the table, as would be the case in our time. With the dishes were to be found as ornaments china animals of various kinds, hideous things to the modern eye but very interesting because they were exceeding dear to the children of an earlier day.
To the cities, when our ships began to sail back and forth from China, there came a great deal of choice pottery from the Orient.1 In some of the more prosperous families this kind of ware was in daily use about the time of the Revolution. But everybody did not care for Eastern art, as may be seen from the following description of a teapot found in a long fable dated 1754:
" A tawdry Tea Pot a la mode Where Art her utmost skill bestow'd, Was much esteem 'd for being old, And on its sides with Red and Gold Strange beasts were drawn in taste Chinese,
t opposite the Heart and Crown i:
ditto, enamel 'ri Punch Bowls, blue and white ditto of v blue and white China Cups &, Saucers Ac. Ac."
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And frightful Fish and hump-backed Trees.
High in an elegant beaufet
This pompous utensil was set.
And near it on a Marble Slab
Forsaken by some careless Drab
A veteran Scrubbing Brush was plac'd
And the rich furniture disgrac'd."
Which tells us that Oriental teapots were no less ugly — and New England housemaids no less careless — in 1754 than in 1914.
A man who made too free with his own china, or in any other way lived more elegantly than his neighbors thought he should, was by no means left in ignorance of the disapproval in which he was held. Thus Hooper, of the Har- vard Class of 1763, was universally called " King " Hooper because of the magnificent style in which his household was conducted. The beautiful mansion which he built at Dan- vers, Massachusetts, is still standing in perfect condition and is one of the finest examples of eighteenth-century architecture in New Eng- land. Its first owner became a refugee in 1775 and died insolvent in 1790.
Dignity rather than luxury was the ap- proved characteristic of the comfortable village home; and this was largely attained by the architecture of the doorway and the spacious lines of the entrance-hall. Often these doorways were quite intricate in their design, but they
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were almost always restrained in decoration and created the effect of fine simplicity. Piazzas were rare, but many houses had a spacious porch before the entrance, which on special occasions was used for sitting out. The finer residences had knockers on the front door, and always, instead of door-knobs, latches were used, iron latches in some cases, wooden ones in other. Where the latch had no thumb-piece, and the more primitive latches were always without this contrivance, a string was attached, and a hole bored for the purpose of letting the string through just above the latch. Thus, when the latch-string hung out, the door could be opened from the outside; locking up was simply a matter of pulling in the string.
The prevailing color of the houses was yellow or red, and until the nineteenth century there were no blinds. Wooden shutters inside were common, a survival of the days when, because of the fear of the Indians, heavy wooden doors were in every home ready to be swung across the windows and used as a barricade. In the more elegant houses, the walls would be hung with landscape wall-paper; but in humbler dwellings, the walls, like the floors, were bare. The latter were frequently painted yellow and in seaboard towns sprinkled with white sea-sand swept into fanciful patterns.
Occasionally a housewife would rebel at the
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blank ugliness of her floors. One such deter- mined to make herself a carpet.1 She secured a large square of sail-cloth and proceeded to paint on it, with such colors as she could procure, a pattern of flowers of every kind she had ever seen and of many — such as blue roses and green Klies — she had never seen. When fin- ished, she covered her product with a thick coat of varnish, and might have enjoyed the result a good deal, but that an old deacon, who chanced to call in, asked her solemnly: " Surely, Sister Brown, you do not expect to have all this and keaven, besides? "
Since many very charming books have been written on the house-furnishings of colonial and later periods, I shall content myself with just a reference here to the high-boys and low- boys, the carved chests and high-posted beds, the fascinating quilts and curious hangings of these long-ago days in New England. But I will not slight the heart of the house, the kitchen with its wide fireplace, its chimney-corner (liter- ally that in the old days), its crane, jack, spit, and pothook. In such a kitchen a tin candle- stick with a long back was usually suspended from the wall over the mantel, while beams and ceilings were hung with ears of corn, crooknecks, and flitches of meat.
1 The oarpeta of the seventeenth century were usually for tables, not for floors at all, it should, however, be rei See Governor Baton's inventory above.
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Comestible comfort was typical of the New England hearthstone. Even where only the utensils of an old-time household survive, — as in the ample kitchen of the Dorothy Q. house in Quincy, Massachusetts, — no great stretch of imagination is required to picture the bustling preparations which must here have gone on when Samuel Sewall arrived to spend the night, or Sir Harry Frankland and Agnes Surriage sent down to be cooked for supper the eels that they had just caught in the brook near by. Here, as in the kitchens of most old New England houses, may be seen a huge chest of sturdy con- struction. For rich and poor alike, when they set up housekeeping, were equipped with a chest and a feather bed. Here, too, is the tin kitchen for roasting meat and baking bread, a churn, a piggin for dishing up water, a swift fastened to the table to wind wool, with its reel, which clicked intelligently at the end of every forty threads, thus letting its manipulator know that after seven such clicks she had wound her skein. But there is no clock in this kitchen, which dates from 1635. New Eng- land's first clock was the property of John Dav- enport, in the New Haven colony, who died in 1670. And as late as 1780 a clock cost no less than twenty-one pounds " hard money." But hour-glasses there were; and many a maiden timed cooking which had to be counted in
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CHAPTER Ml
KEEPING A DIARY
THE men and women of early New Eng- land did not necessarily wait until they had married and settled down before beginning to keep a diary; some of the most interesting journals I have seen were from the pens of children and college students. But it was quite a common thing, none the less, for a diary to begin as does Deacon John Tudor's: " 1732 June 15. I was married to Ms Jane Varney. We was Married by Dr. Timy Cutler in Christ Church in Boston at 9 o'clock fore- noon." Following which immediately comes the entry: " July 17. Went to House keeping.* Thus we appear to be justified in placing the diary chapter of this book just after that de- voted to the large and varied business of launch- ing a home.
John Quincy Adams began to keep a diary at the age of eleven and continued the practice, almost without interruption, for sixty -eight years. The results of his industry, as edited and amplified by Charles Francis Adams, make
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6ve large volumes. Doctor Manasseh Cutler of Ipswich, from whose entertaining journal we shall have occasion to quote, kept a careful record of his personal affairs from 1765 until 1823. And Judge Sewall, as we know, covered in his very important diary practically every event of consequence during his full and varied life.
The Judge of the Witches generally used for his journal interleaved almanacs, though he afterwards expanded some of his first entries for the pages of his diary proper. A friend who has made a careful study of manuscript diaries, and has examined hundreds, probably, of these fascinating relics of a vanished day, tells me that their kinds are legion. " All diaries prob- ably had covers once," she says, " and I believe that these covers were usually of leather, al- though sometimes, of course, paper was made to serve; I have seen some for which pretty bits of wall-paper had been thus utilized. The ' pocketbook ' with a brass clasp or a leather strap was not uncommon, and some of the leather-bound books are very old. Many dia- ries, however, were kept in interleaved alma- nacs, to which extra leaves, — either of letter- paper, — or perhaps the unused sheets of old letters with writing on one side — were added. These sheets were of all sizes, sometimes square, and sometimes long and narrow; but the paper
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was invariably good, and ink was always used, — even in soldiers' journals."
One of the earliest diaries extant is that of Reverend William Adams, who was born May 27, 1650, graduated at Harvard in 1671, and from 1673 until his death in 1685 presided over the Congregational Church in Dedham, Massa- chusetts. This journal was written in a small blank volume, which once had clasps, and is bound in black leather. It contains perhaps four hundred pages, of which fifteen are covered by Mr. Adams' entries, inscribed in a small, compressed hand, with every letter very care- fully'formed. That young Adams often trav- eled from Cambridge to Ipswich " afoot," that he once got " lost in Charlestowne woods and lay in ye woods all night so bewildered I took N. for S. ^rad contra," and that Samuel Sewall some- times accompanied him on his student tramps are interesting early entries.
The twenty-third birthday of this earnest young graduate found him " removed from Cambridge to Dedham to ye solemn under- taking of ye ministry there on triall for future settlement. As we were coming to Dedham my horse stumbled and I had a fall tho I re- ceived no hurt; which caused me to reflect upon myselfe whether I had not been something lifted up, yt there were so many come to attend on me, and to adore ye wisdom and
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grace of God in yt he can and doth effectually bring down high thoughts without bringing any reall hurt to his servants.
" July 29. The Church and inhabitants of Dedham agreed to give me ye summe of 100£ money or money's worth towards ye purchase of a habitation for my settlement, to be paid at 3 moths warning.
" Dec. 8. I was ordained. . . .
" Jan. 30, 1674. I was admitted to the free- dom of ye Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
" Oct. SI. I was married to Mary Manning of Cambridge.
" Nov. 12, 1675. My daughter Mary was born. . . .
" April 13, 1676. My daughter Mary died. . . .
" March 26, 1677. My son Eliphalet . . . was born.
" Jan. 17, 1678. My son William was born. . . .
" June 24, 1679. My dear and loving wife departed this life after we had been married and lived together 4 years and 8 months, whereby I am bereaved of a sweet and pleasant companion and left in a very lonely and solitary condition. '
" Anno 1680 — March 27. I was married to Alice Bradford, daughter to Major William Bradford of PHmouth."
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This is almost the last entry in the diary. In another hand, we soon find the record of the young pastor's premature death.
Another Massachusetts parson, Reverend Ebenezer Parkinan, kept a journal by means of which we are enabled to have an intimate share in small-town New England life during the early eighteenth century. This diary, edited by Harriette M. Forbes and given to the public by the Westborough Historical Society, reflects as does no other volume which I have been privileged to see the joys and sorrows, the petty cares and economies of a conscientious country parson. As we read, we find ourselves worried, just as the clerical writer was, over the failure of the parish to pay his salary promptly, his ominously scanty supply of firewood, and the imminent recurrence of the Harvard Col- lege bills for the education of " son Eh'as."
Ebenezer Parkman was born in Boston, Sep- tember 5, 1708, graduated from Harvard Col- lege in 1721, promptly married Mary Champney of Cambridge, and by her had five children. Then, after nearly twelve years of married life, Mrs. Parkman died, and the bereaved husband and father, though he mourned her sincerely, began to look about for some other good woman who would be the head of his home and the mother of his children. Thus we find him writing in his journal:
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" February 17, 1737 N. B. Ye Discovery of my Inclinations to Capt. Sharp and to Mm. by Yr urgent persuasion I tarryd and lodg'd there — N. B. Mrs. Susanna Sharp. " Mistress Susanna was a maid of twenty-one summers at this time and her father was a prominent citi- zen and large landowner of Brookline, Massa- chusetts. We do not wonder that a West- borough minister, who was more than ten years her senior and had five small children to be brought up, found himself unable to persuade her into matrimony. Mr. Parkman seems to have done his best but records at last that his " arguments " were " fruitless with Mrs. Susan."
The next lady to whom he turned his atten- tion as a suitor was Miss Hannah Breck, daugh- ter of Reverend Robert Breck, minister at Springfield, Massachusetts, and the sister of Mrs. Benjamin Gott of Marlborough. It was in the pleasant home of the good doctor whom we met in a previous chapter that Mr. Park- man conducted his wooing. Hannah was also twenty-one and by no means lacked spirit. Apparently she refused the good parson at first and then, at his request, burned the letters and poems in which he had been pouring out his heart to her. Yet, not long afterwards, we find him writing:
"March £5, 1737: Rode to Marlborough.
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Spent ye afternoon at Dr. Gott's. N. B. Mrs. H — h B — k at ye Dr.'s still. Our conversation of a piece with what it used to be. I mark her admirable Conduct, her Prudence and wisdom, her good manners & her distinguishing Respect- fulness to me wc accompany her Denyals. After it grew late in ye Evening I rode home to West., through the Dark and the Dirt, but cheerfully and comfortably (comparatively)."
A week later we find him again at Doctor Gott's. " Mrs. H — h was thought to be gone to Mr. Week's or Capt. Williams, with design to lodge there, but she returned to ye Doctors. And she gave me her Company till it was very late. Her Conversation was very friendly, and with divers expressions of Singular and Peculiar Regard. ... I lodged there, and with great satisfaction & Composure." And although Mis- tress Hannah had categorically said, on this occasion, that she could not " yield to being a step mother ", she appears to have yielded in the next breath; for she married her minister on September 11, 1737, and began her career as first lady of Westborough by entertaining Paul Dudley at dinner, a fortnight later, as he rode back from keeping court at Springfield, her former home.
The next entry we are privileged to see in the journal shows that more than forty years have slipped away and Elias, the youngest of the
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eleven children born to Hannah and Ebenezer Parkman, is a student at Harvard. The date is November 4, 1778. We read: " Elias, on Mr. Tainter's Horse returned to Cambridge. I gave him 14 dollars, my newest Shooes, a variety of cloatheing, half a large Cheese &c &c May God incline his Heart to Religion & Learn- ing! "
Putting Elias through college was a hard strain on the parson, now well along in years, and, had not the older brothers helped, might have been impossible. For the depression of the currency had made Mr. Parkman 's salary very inadequate to his needs. So poor was he that his gratitude is really touching when " December 4, 1778: At eve came Mr. Elisha Forbes and his Wife to Visit us, and brought an extraordinary present. 31 pounds of Meat, Beef and Pork and a Cheese of 12 lbs., and supped with us. Mr. Forbes also offered yt if I would take one of ye Boston newspaper, he would pay for a year. May God reward his Benevolence and Generosity ! "
Individuals, then as now, were often more generous than the community of which they were a part. Thus, when the Town Meeting came to consider making Mr. Parkman " some further allowance, considering the vast increase of ye Necessaries of Life, it passed negatively." The worthy pastor's only comment upon this is:
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" The proceedings of Ye Town yesterday were to my surprise."
Old maids who liked to visit the minister and advise him as to his work were no more un- common in that day than in this. On May 24, 1779, we read: " Miss Eliza Beats came in to see me and consult me upon her Spiritual State — mentions several Scriptures She would have me preach upon, but which I have already. As to her bodily State, she is grown exceeding dropsical."
This lethargic spinster, Miss Eliza Beals, was, on the whole, less of a thorn in Mr. Parkman's side than was Mrs. Persis Adams, who refused to live with her husband. On September 13, 1779, we read:
" Had some conversation with Mr. Daniel Adams about his wife living from him. He tells me he desires she would return and that he would do anything reasonable to obtain it. P. M. he came here, shewd me a Copy of a Letter which he had sent to her some time ago, desiring her to let him know what are her Difficulty's, and what she would have ■ him do. To which letter she returned him no Answer."
" September 21. I rode to Mr. Joseph Grout's to see Mrs. Adams who lives there. I dind there, though Mr. Grout and his Wife were gone to Boston. Mrs. Adams seems to be
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utterly unwilling to go to live with her Hus- band again."
But ladies were not allowed to leave their husbands lightly in those days, and " a Com- mittee of ye Church " was soon appointed to go and reason with the reluctant Mrs. Adams. After which a Church Meeting took up " ye Affair " in an endeavor to bring " accuser & accused Face to Face." Mrs. Adams was present at this meeting, but her husband, " though notified seasonably by a Messenger, sent on purpose by ye Pastor to him ", did not come. Then Mrs. Adams, two months later, ** prays ye Church Meeting (to be otherwise next Monday) may be adjourned to some future time, inasmuch as she cannot get ready." Nor was she ready when the next appointed day came. Mistress Persis apparently knew her own mind and had made that mind up not to return to her husband. We are relieved when we read later that she is " now supposed to be trying for Relief in ye Civil Law ", and that Mr. Park- man, accepting this, " prayed and gave ye Blessing as ye Meeting was dissolved, Novem- ber 9, 1780." The good man had been working on this harassing matter for over a year; and at the age of seventy-seven such an annoyance might very well have been spared him.
Another of Mr. Parkman's interesting charges was Tom Cook, " the honest thief ", who was
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believed to have sold himself to the Devil, and whose picturesque pUferings color many pages of mid-Massachusetts history. Tom's specialty was ingeniously withdrawing from him that had in order that he might bestow in Scriptural fashion on unfortunates that had not. Mr. Farkman had baptized him as a baby and so always took a fatherly interest in him. Thus we find in the journal, under date of August 27, 1779: "The notorious Thorn. Cook came in (he says) on Purpose to see me. I gave him wt admonn Instruction and Caution I could — I beseech God to give it Force! He leaves me with fair Words — thankf. and Promising."
Covering almost the same period as the Park- man diary is that of Joshua Hempstead, which the New London County Historical Society published a few years ago. This is a diary in the strictest sense of the word — a systematic account of daily duties, occupations, and events, written by a busy, keen-eyed farmer who was also a man of affairs. If I were to be asked to name two books only, by reading which a good insight might be obtained into daily life in old New England, I think I should name Sewall's diary and this of Joshua Hempstead.
The writer of this photographic account of life in Connecticut one hundred and fifty years ago was born and lived all his days in the house which is now the home of Anna Hempstead
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Branch, the poet, and which is well known to be the oldest house in New London. The original of the large octavo volume put out by the His- torical Society comprises about seven hundred and fifty pages of closely written manuscript without lines; these pages are twelve by seven and a 'half inches in size. They cover the years from 1711, when the diarist was thirty-three, to 1758, the year of his death. And just as Sewall tells us in his diary all about the often very important happenings of which he was a part, so Hempstead pictures for us the trivial little occurrences that made up the daily routine of a man who was at once a farmer, a surveyor, a house and ship carpenter, an attorney, a stone- cutter, a sailor, and a trader — performing, to boot, the offices pertaining to a justice of the peace, a judge of probate, and an executor of wills. Yet, such was the simplicity of the times, that on July 18, 1712, this same man writes: " I was at home all day making my Self a pr Linnen Breeches "!
Hempstead, being a magistrate, had a hand in many of the sordid criminal trials of the day. When the rumor gets about that Sarah Bramble has given birth to a " Bastard Child not to be found ", it becomes his duty to investigate. And then follow horrible details of the manner in which the poor woman is believed to have killed her unwelcome offspring. These are in no wise
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different from such details when given in the yellow press of to-day. But not of our time is what follows:
" Tuesday, April 14, 1752 a Lecture Sermon pr by ye Revd Mr Jewit on ye ocasion of Sarah Brambles Suposed Murder of her Bastard Child; She being present in the Broad 'ally & afterwards Comitted to Prison." No color, no comment. The child may have been dead when Sarah attempted to dispose of its remains by burning them, but prison followed swiftly just the same.
Again, on October 5, 1756: "I was at the Court att the Meetinghouse in ye foren to hear the Tryal of Bristow a Negro man (belonging to the Revd Beckwith of Lyme) for Committing a Rape on the Body of Hannah Beebee Junr a young woman ... he was found Guilty & Received Sentance of Death next day."
Joshua Hempstead died before the disturb- ances which led up to the Revolution had be- come acute, so that we have no entries covering those events. But Deacon John Tudor person- ally witnessed many of these interesting inci- dents and has left us some valuable descriptions of the first Stamp Act Riots, the Boston Mas- sacre, the famous Tea Party, and the Lexington skirmish. But the present volume is not con- cerned with wars and warriors; I much prefer, therefore, to quote the good deacon on the
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union services held Sunday, November 10, 1782, in King's Chapel, Boston:
" 10 A. M. I went to the Chappie to hear Mr. Freeman Read prayers & preach. His Tex was Search the Scriptures. The Old South people met with the Church people. In the forenoon the Chh of England Service was car- red on & p. m. the Congregatioul way. . . . And the Reason of the 2 Congregations meeting in this way was, that when the British troops had possession of the Town, they cruelly tore down all the inside of the Old South Meeting house to exercise their Horses in. So that when the people that were forssd oute of Town re- turn'd they was obliged to borrow the Chappie to meet in. . . . To me it was Agreeable to see former Bigatree so far gon & going off, and God grant that for Time to come boath Churchmen & Desenters may live in peace & Love." l
Occasionally a diary shows us the innermost thoughts of a profoundly unhappy woman. The published extracts of Miss Rebecca Dick- inson's journal, for instance, give us some poignant glimpses into the corroding loneli- ness of a hopeless spinster. Miss Dickinson, familiarly called " Aunt Beck ", was a seam- stress, who traveled from house to house in the course of her work and was welcomed every- where for her wit and her gift of epigram. But
1 Deacon Tudor's diary, p. 96.
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there is nothing sparkling about her diary, a few extracts of which follow:
" July 25, 1787, makes me forty-nine years of age. ... I do wonder at myself that I should be so earthly-minded and look after the things of the world as though I should be the better for any of them or think those any more happy who have them. . . ." The Sunday fol- lowing she reflects upon her lonesomeness, add- ing: " God only knows there is no person in the world who loves Company more than me." The Sunday following that, she spends part of the night wondering " how it come about that others and all the world was in Possession of Children and friends and a hous and homes while I was so od as to sit here alone." A wed- ding at a neighbor's home heightens the sting of these reflections.
One evening, on returning home, Aunt Beck finds her house so dark and lonesome that she "walked the rooms" and "cryed" herself " sick." " Found my heart very stubborn," she records, " against the government of God who has set me here for to try my fidelity to my lord who knows the best way."
Colic and pleurisy add to her trials. And then she encounters " an old acquaintance — was in Company with him ten years agoe he has sense very well married." This chance meeting disturbs her greatly — by reason of the fact
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that her former suitor asks her " if her name was changed " — and sends her home to medi- tate further on her lonely state, rebel at her fate, and finally repent of her wilfulness.
Yet, after much agony of soul, Aunt Beck evidently decided, as many another single woman has done, that the unmarried state has its distinct compensations. For we find her ending her book on " the 8 day of August 1802 " with the reflection that though she is now in her sixty-fifth year, " never did the goodness of god appeare more and brighter." '
One of the most delightful diaries that has come down to us is that of Anna Green Winslow, who in 1770, at the age of ten, came from Nova Scotia, where her father was then stationed with his regiment, to be " finished " at the schools of Boston. She lived while in Boston with her father's sister (constantly referred to in the diary as " Aunt Deming ") in Central Court, which led out of Washington Street, just south of Summer Street; and she attended the Old South Church. Her diary, written day by day to be sent home to her parents, was given to the world in 1894 by Alice Morse Earle * and, though the work of a mere child, is of inesti- mable value for the vivid pictures it gives us
' " History of Hatfield," by D. W. and R. F. Welfc. F. C. H. Gibbons, Springfield, Massachusetts.
)" Diary of Anna Green Winslow: " Houghton, Mifflin and Com- pany.
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of social life in Puritan Boston just before the outbreak of the Revolution.
The whimsical little maiden who wrote this entertaining journal never lived to have chil- dren of her own. Though there is no town or church record of her death, she is believed to have passed away at Marshfield in the fall of 1779, very likely in the house afterwards occu- pied by Daniel Webster, inasmuch as that was the family home of the Winslows in 1775.
One of the early entries in this diary is on Anna's twelfth birthday, November 29, 1771. On this occasion she had a party, at which Lu- cinda, her aunt's slave-girl, was " principal pi- per "t as the four couples — all girls — enjoyed themselves at " country dansing, danceing, I mean." Among Anna's entries for the following month is the following:
"Deer 30th: Yesterday between meetings my aunt was call'd to Mrs. Water's & about 8 in the evening Dr. Lloyd brought little master to town (N. B. As a memorandum for myself. My aunt stuck a white sat tan pincushion for Mrs. Waters. On one side is a planthorn with flowers, on the reverse, just under the border are, on one side stuck these words, Josiah Waters, then follows on the end, Deer 1771. on the next side & end are the words, Welcome little Stranger.)"
Which, being interpreted, means that in
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honor of the birth of Josiah Waters, at which Doctor James Lloyd, the famous Tory physi- cian, assisted, Mrs. Deming presented Mrs. Waters with a white silk pincushion stuck around the edge with pins. Pins were then highly valued from their rarity. A single paper of pins was considered a lifelong supply. Stories are told of mothers who brought up a large family on four rows; and grandmothers were wont to exhibit with pride the " great pins " that had formed a part of their bridal outfit. A thorn bush supplied the early substitute for pins; ladies, elegantly dressed and setting out for church, plucked from the bush near the front door a thorn or two with which to fasten rebellious laces.
Anna, not being an Episcopalian, had not kept Christmas that year, but she records in her diary, on January 1, 1772, that she has received " a very handsome new year's gift viz. the His- tory of Joseph Andrews abreviated. In nice Guilt and flowers covers." This " Guilt " does not refer to Joseph Andrews's well-known lack of morality but to the decoration of the book- cover; Anna's " History ", it is to be observed, was " abreviated," by which, we hope, expur- gated is meant.
A very striking thing, however, about this twelve-year-old girl is that she is quite familiar with evil in its various forms as well as with the
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crude facts of life. She refers without any apparent feeling to the peccadilloes and punish- ments of a certain Betty Smith, who seems to have been a family servant at one time, but who " when the 29th Regiment encamp'd upon the common took herself among them (as the Irish say) & there she stay'd with Bill Pinchion & awhile. The next news of her was that she was got into gaol for stealing; from whence she was taken to the publick whipping post."
Familiarity with this whipping-post had prob- ably made little Anna dull to its horrors. It stood at this time, according to Samuel Breck, " conspicuously and prominently in the most public street of the town and was painted red- It was placed in State Street directly under the windows of a great writing-school which I fre- quented, and from them the scholars were in- dulged in the spectacle of all kinds of punish- ment suited to harden their hearts and brutalize their feelings. Here women were taken in a huge cage, in which they were dragged on wheels from prison, and tied to the post with bared backs on which thirty or forty lashes were be- stowed, among the screams of the culprit and uproar of the mob. A little further in the street was to be seen the pillory with three or four fellows fastened by the head and hands, and standing for an hour in that helpless posture, exposed to gross and cruel jeers from the multi-
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tude, who pelted them incessantly with rotten eggs and every repulsive kind of garbage that could be collected." Inasmuch as little Anna had frequently encountered sights such as these on her way to and from school, it is perhaps not so odd that she should refer unfeelingly to the case of Betty Smith.
Death was another appalling fact of life with which this child seems to have been early made familiar. In speaking of the " departure last week " of Mr. Stephen March, she regrets that she has not heard the particulars of his com- plication of disorders and so cannot inform her mother " whether he engag'd the King of terrors with christian fortitude, or otherwise.
" ' Stoop down my Thoughts, that use to rise, Converse a while with Death; Think how a gasping Mortal lies, And pants away his Breath.* "
We certainly should not expect a well-bred child of to-day to drop thus unfeelingly into poetry while writing to her family of the death of an old and valued friend.
Anna was very fond of rehearsing the sermons that she heard, and, inasmuch as it was her custom to attend with her aunt the evening " assembly," held each week at Mrs. Rogers', before which one of the ministers of the Old
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South delivered a discourse, we have many curious abstracts from the preaching of that day. Thus we learn that " Mr. Bacon . . . said that the Son of God always did as his father gave him commandment, & to prove this, he said, that above 17 hundred years ago he left the bosom of the Father, & came & took up his abode with men, & bore all the scourgings & buffetings which the vile Jews inflicted on him, & then was hung upon the accursed tree — he died, was buried, & in three days rose again — ascended up to heaven & there took his seat at the right hand of Majesty on high from whence he will come to be the supream and impartial judge of quick & dead — and when his poor Mother & her poor husband went to Jerusalem to keep the passover & he went with them, he disputed among the doctors, & when his Mother ask'd him about it he said ' wist ye not that I must be about my father's business,* — all this he said was a part of that wrighteousness for the sake of which a sinner is justafied — Aunt has been upstairs all the time I have been write- ing & recollecting this — so no help from her. She is come down now & I have been reading this over to her. She sais, she is glad I remem- ber so much, but I have not done the subject justice. She sais I have blended things some- what improperly.'* Anna was in many ways a real child, however,
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as is seen in her frequent and very proud refer- ences to her Aunt Storer, who lived on Sudbury Street, where she particularly enjoyed visiting. Under date of April 15, 1772, we read: " I am going to Aunt Storer 's as soon as writing school is done. I shall dine with her, if she is not en- gaged. It is a long time since I was there, & indeed it is a long time since I have been able to get there. For though the walking has been pretty tolerable at the South End it has been intolerable down in town. ... If she had wanted much to have seen me she might have sent either one of her chaises, her chariot, or her babyhutt, one of which I see going by the door almost every day.
" April 16. — I dined with Aunt Storer yes- terday. My cousin Charles Storer lent me Gulliver's Travels abreviated, which aunt says I may read for the sake of perfecting myself in reading a variety of composures, she sais farther that the piece was desin'd as a burlesque upon the times in which it was wrote."
This "Aunt Storer" was Mrs. Ebenezer Storer, the sister of Anna's mother. Her hus- band was for many years treasurer of Harvard College, and their home on Sudbury Street was the center of much elegant hospitality. We do not wonder as we read of the rich Persian carpet of her drawing-room; of her window-seat with its curtains and cushions of green damask; of
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her oval mirrors and girandoles, and of her dining-room with its wide chimney-piece lined and ornamented with Dutch tiles, that Anna liked to visit here.
Aunt Storer was a person of much elegance, as her beautiful portrait painted by Copley well shows; and when little Anna rebelled at the enormous " heddus," or pompadour roll, to which the exigencies of fashion had con- demned her, only observed that it " ought to be made less ", whereas Aunt Deming declared with emphasis that it " ought not to be made at all! " " It makes my head itch & ache, & burn like anything Mamma," writes our little dia- rist of this same roll. " When it first came home, aunt put it on, & my new cap on it, she then took up her apron & mesur'd me, and from the roots of my hair on my forehead to the top of my notions, I mesur'd above an inch longer than I did downwards from the roots of my hair to the end of my chin. Nothing renders a young person more amiable than virtue & modesty without the help of false hair." Yet poor Anna had to keep her roll, for this was the era in which head-dresses were all of extravagant height, and barbers were blithely advertising, as did a certain Salemite, that he would " attend the polite construction of rolls to raise ladies* heads to any pitch desired."
Mary Osgood Sumner, who was mysteri-
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ously lost at sea with her sister, Ann, and an- other sister, kept her child-diary in parallel columns the more easily to contrast her sins of omission and commission. Thus, under the " Black Leaf ", we read of such dire offenses as leaving her " staise " on the bed or spilling coffee on the table.
This is not a long nor a heinous list. Her entries on the " White Leaf " are much more extended. Like many another of us, she ap- pears to have enjoyed her virtues more than she lamented her sins.
Mary Moody Emerson was another con- scientious young person who kept a diary and recorded therein her daily endeavor to do her duty and to satisfy at the same time the hunger of her eager young mind:
" Rose before light every morn," she writes, " and visited from necessity once and again for books; read Butler's Analogy; commented on the Scriptures; read in a little book, Cicero's Let- ters, — a few; touched Shakespere, washed, carded, cleaned house, baked. To-day cannot recall an error, nor scarcely a sacrifice, but more fulness of content in the labors of a day never was felt. There is a sweet pleasure in bending to circumstances while superior to them." This last sentence might have been a quotation, aforetime, from one of her famous nephew's essays; Aunt Mary, even when a girl, had
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much of the wholesome respect for life as it is, which characterizes Emerson. Her journal is very different in tone from that of another young student, which I have seen in manu- script, and in which, day after day, I found recorded only the single word " Melancholy."
Keeping a diary, quite often, of course, pro- moted in the young a tendency towards morbid introspection. But it did not inevitably do so. Stephen Salisbury of Worcester, whose corre- spondence with his mother 1 supplies us with a very interesting picture of college life at Cam- bridge in the second decade of the nineteenth century, appears to have been a delightfully normal youth. Just after he had matriculated, at the age of fifteen, he writes home, naively: " I should be much obliged if you would send me four short curtains, such as I have no doubt you have seen, which are put on a little below the middle of the window and I should like to have them made with rings so as to draw." A few days later he refers again to the cur- tains. " I have just received my bundle and was much disappointed in not receiving my curtains; for I cannot do without them for when we are dressing nothing hinders people who are going by from looking in upon us; not only that but saucy young fellows, going by,
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first look in to see whether there are those within strong enough to oppose them and if there are not they strike on the window to frighten us and almost push it in now if we had curtains they would not know how large we were."
The fond mother at home, however, still does not send the curtains. Instead she counsels thus with her son concerning them:
" Worcester 3d Novr 1813
" My dear Child,
" You are still, I find, very desirous of having Curtains to your Windows, & did I know that you would be accommodated by them as you expect, I would indulge you, but I can hardly suppose it, those who would intrude on you at improper seasons and otherwise behave im- properly, would still do so tho' you had curtains. Could they not look thr'o or over them? . . . I wish, my dear, that you should always be in a situation to be seen by any who may call, which you certainly will if you are in the path of duty, do not I entreat you let triffiing and childish pursuits take your time and attention from your studies, and so be obliged to get your lesson at a late hour, that would be foolish conduct & I hope you will avoid it. I hope you had your Hair Cut some of these fine warm days we have had, & that you dont fail to comb and brush your hair ev'ry day. if it has not yet been cut
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take some fine day and do not have it cut very short, do not neglect your teeth, if you do they will be the worse for what has been done to them, clean them ev'ry day I charge you. keep yourself clean & neat, it is not incompatible with your duties, nor unbecoming in the Scholar, be assured.
" Your affectionate mother
" E. Salisbury."
Apparently Stephen needed this little homily on the efficacy of the tooth-brush for we find him complaining constantly of toothache; when he is half through his first year at college his mother writes: " Cannot you, my dear, collect courage sufficient to have the worst one ex- tracted? " Then she adds, as a postscript to her letter: " Will you accept of a little Ginger- bread my Son? but take care not to make your poor tooth ache. You had better cut but little of it at a time." For though gingerbread seems to us of to-day a childish treat for a Harvard student, it figured largely in the cash account which Stephen sent home. Other items of ex- penditure are:
for crape 25
biscuit 02
apples to teamster 25
G.Bell 06
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Cuting hair 18
pears 02
Cake 06
chestnuts 12
football 06
Hoarhound candy 12
sealing wax 12
Oysters 07
stages 50
The stage from Boston to Cambridge ran twice daily at this time, at twelve o'clock and again at six. But freshmen were not encouraged to make use of this accommodation more than once a month and Stephen is sternly questioned by his father on more than one occasion as to why he went again to Boston " so soon after you left it."
The trousers of this student were a great care both to him and to his mother. " I have sent you white pantaloons," she writes towards the end of his freshman year; " you may like to wear them of a very hot Sabbath with your thin Coat & white socks, if you wish to appear well dressed at any time wear white socks with your Nankin pantaloons. I would not have you wear those blue clouded socks in to Boston, keep yourself neat, not forgetting the soap — comb — & toothbrush."
Then, with true motherly zeal, she sends a
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relay of pantaloons unexpectedly, only to re- ceive from the boy in Cambridge this troubled note: " I was very sorry to see two pair of nan- kin pantaloons for I dont see how I shall man- age to wear them all; and by next year they will be so small that I shall be obliged to have , them peiced and you know how I dislike that, it looks very ill; but if they had not been made until next year they would have been fitted for my shape and I have enough for this season be- sides them."
Wounded maternal love, mixed with offended New England thrift, speaks in the reply to this: " I was disappointed that my present to you last week, of 2 pr Nankin 'pantaloons, were not rec'd with gratitude — more especially as they were made of an article which was not new, & intended merely for the present season — I hope you will acknowledge to me that you have found them very comfortable." He did so acknowledge, of course, but he repeated just the same his fear that they would be " too small for next season." Stephen had evidently suf- fered in the past from " peiced " pantaloons.
Of a new gown there are several similar men- tions. The nature of this article is defined in the College Laws of 1807 as follows: " All the undergraduates shall be clothed in coats of blue grey, or of dark blue, or of black. And no student shall appear within the limits of the
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College or town of Cambridge in a coat of any other color, unless he shall have on a night gown ' or, in stormy or cold weather, an outside garment over his coat. Nor shall a surtout, or any outside garment of any other color than a blue grey, or dark blue or black, be substituted for the uniform coat. But the Students are permitted to wear black gowns, in which they may appear on all public occasions. They shall not wear gold or silver lace, cord or edging upon their hats, waistcoats, or any other parts of their clothing."
The college course was then only three years long, so young Salisbury found himself a junior when he returned to Cambridge in August, 1813. Immediately he joined the militia with his parents' warm approval, and he also regis- tered with a dancing class. " We approve of your attending the dancing School," his mother wrote, " only be very careful of coming out warm into the Air. it will not I trust break in upon more important excercises — you will prob- ably want a pair of Dancing pumps, thick Shoes will not be proper to learn in, you can get a pair in Boston, but do not go hi on purpose, once a week is quite often enough to go in to Boston."
As the time of Stephen's own Commencement approaches, we learn of a " black slk gown
1 The reference here is to a species of dressing-gown, not to a
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which the government have a dents to adopt as their distin to be worn only on public occai again, too, the inevitable panl advised me to get thin pants silk ones for Commencement — would defer it till I wrote you. 1 I grey pantaloons, you know, whicj handsome and this summer will that I shal not probably have tie* I have hardly felt a desire for so that if you please I should rati any this season." Mrs. Salisbury quite certain that the summer will 1 strenuously urges a pair of thin panli Commencement. Just what kind the proud senior actually did important occasion we do not know . know that his Commencement Conference, which three others him, "On the influence of the pe condition of the agriculturist, the l the merchant, and the profession Of Stephen's Commencement " at Mr. Hearsey's in Cambridge ", previous chapter.
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CHAPTER VIII
HAVING A PICTURE TAKEN
THOUGH the Puritans frowned on graven images and had no sympathy with art, as we understand the word, they were far from averse to endowing posterity with their somewhat forbidding features; scarcely had the first century of pioneering drawn to a close when the leading worthies of the day began to have their portraits painted. Thus we have Cotton Mather's astonishingly worldly counte- nance, as Peter Pelham painted it; Samuel Sewall's personable figure has been preserved for us by Smibert; and the kindly face of good Bishop Berkeley has also been transmitted to us, as seen and put on canvas by this English painter, who was his friend.
John Smibert journeyed to America in 1728, intending to occupy a chair in Bishop Berkeley's proposed college for Indian youth. When this project turned out to be a dream, Smibert married him a New England wife and stayed on here to paint the portraits of well-known Americans. That it was not then infra dig. for
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a portrait painter to turn an honest penny in any way that he could may be seen from the following advertisement, which I copy froi the New England Weekly Journal of Octol 21, 1734:
" John Smibert, Painter; Sells all sorts Colours, dry or ground, with oils and brushes, fanns of several sorts, the best Mezzotinto, Italian, French, Dutch and English Prints, Frames and Glasses or without, by wholesale Retale at reasonable Rates; at his House Queen-Street, between the Town-House and Orange Tree, Boston."
Smibert did some of the earliest and best por traits executed in America before the Revo- lution, perhaps his most successful production being his portrait of Jonathan Edwards. His work is of great historical value, and he has every right to first mention in our list of picture- makers of New England.
The earliest native colonial painter with ai claim to remembrance to-day was, howevi Robert Feke, a descendant of Henry Feaki who emigrated to Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1630, and a branch of whose family settled at Oyster Bay, Long Island. From this place the future artist came to Newport, Rhode Island. But before marrying and settling down, Feke en- joyed some wander-years in Spain, the influence of which is to be seen in his pictures; his work is
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far less hard and dry than that of Smibert, with which it is often confused. His portraits of Governor and Mrs. Bowdoin, in the possession of Bowdoin College, are still fresh and natural in coloring and are also good in drawing and expression. Feke died at Bermuda, whither he had gone for his health, at the early age of forty-four.
Contemporary with Smibert and Robert Feke was Jonathan B. Blackburn, whose work may be found on the walls of many a museum and ancestral home of New England. Blackburn came to Boston the year before Smibert died, and during the next fifteen years executed por- traits of 'more than fifty well-known New Eng- landers of the day. Then he went away quite suddenly, the probable reason for his abrupt departure being that he could not stand the competition offered by the work of John Single- ton Copley, the greatest of our native portrait painters. Copley was the stepson of Peter Pelham, who was himself a painter and en- graver of considerable talent. Yet the young man was really ajmost entirely self-taught, and his career is, therefore, the strongest possible refutation of the oft-repeated fallacy that no good work can be expected of a man who has not had the benefit of " art atmosphere ", asso- ciation, that is, with other painters, and the opportunity to study the famous pictures of
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the world. So successful was he and so generally did the great folk of his time sit to him, before he left New England in 1774, that the mere possession of a family portrait from Copley's brush has long been held to be a kind of patent of nobility in Massachusetts.
Critics have pronounced the four portraits of the Boylston family, which hang in the great dining-room of Harvard Memorial Hall in Cambridge the best examples of Copley's por- trait work and have declared the portrait of Mrs. Thomas Boylston the high-water mark of his art. The painting of the artist's family, however, which hangs in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, is perhaps the most impressive canvas of his to be found in New England to-day, and is highly interesting, besides, because it shows us Copley himself, with his beautiful wife, his lovely children, and his dignified father-in-law. One feels very strongly the parent's love for his cherished children as well as the artist's pleas- ure in good subjects, as one studies the quaint figure of the little girl which has a prominent place in the front of this group, and the charm- ing picture of the younger child, laughing up into its mother's face.
Copley may well have painted his wife and family con amore, for he was exceedingly for- tunate in the marriage he had made. His father had died the year of his birth, — which occurred
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in Boston in 1737, — and Peter Pelham, who had married Mrs. Copley when John was nine years old, himself passed away 'two years later. So that this lad with a genius for paint- ing was the penniless son of a widow, who had to support herself by keeping a tobacco shop! Fortunate, indeed, was his alliance, in 1769, with the beautiful daughter of Richard Clarke, a wealthy merchant who was the Boston agent for the East India Company.
Already, to be sure, Copley had made his place as an artist. His " Boy and The Flying Squirrel ", sent anonymously to the Royal Academy when he was twenty-three, had opened a place for him in England whenever he should decide to go there. For the present, however, he was staying on in Boston, painting portraits. It was as much a matter of course for rich New Englanders to have their wives and daughters painted by Copley as to send their sons to college. During the twenty-year period that he thus worked in America, nearly three hun- dred portraits were turned out in his studio!
In painting women, Copley was especially successful. He had a keen feeling for beauty in line, color and texture, and the women's dress of his time fed this taste. Copley's grand- daughter, Mrs. M. B. Amory, who has written a capital biography of him, declares that he had theory and principles about line and color,
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which he carried out with scrupulous elaboration for the sake of heightening the charm of the picture. " The rose, the jewel in the hair, the string of pearls around the throat were no acci- dental arrangement," she writes, "but accord- ing to principles of taste which he thoroughly understood. The hair ornamented in harmony with the full dress of the period ; the fall of lace shading the roundness and curve of the arm, were perhaps unimportant details in themselves, but conduced by their nice adjustment to the harmonious effect of the composition. Added to these, he delighted to place his subject among kindred scenes: sometimes we catch a glimpse, in the distance, of garden or mansion; or at others of the fountain and the grove, the squir- rel, that favorite of his brush, the bird and the spaniel — all treated with equal grace and felicity."
The best contemporary glimpse of Copley, the successful painter of Boston's dignitaries, has been provided for us by another painter, of whom we shall soon be speaking, Colonel John Trumbull, who, while a student at Cambridge, was taken by his brother to call at the artist's residence. This was in 1772, after Copley had obtained possession of his " farm " on Beacon Hill. " His house," Trumbull writes, " was on the Common where Mr. Sears elegant grand palazzo stands [now occupied by the Somerset
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Club]. A mutual friend of Mr. Copley and my brother, Mr. James Lovell, went with us to introduce us. We found Mr. Copley dressed to receive a party of friends at dinner. I re- member his dress and appearance, an elegant- looking man, dressed in/i fine maroon cloth, with gilt buttons. This was dazzling to my unprac- ticed eye. But his paintings, the first I had ever seen deserving the name, riveted, absorbed my attention, and renewed all my desire to enter upon such a pursuit."
Copley himself had never seen any pictures at the time he did some of the portraits which are most valued in New England to-day. The painting of his family, to be sure, he did after he had settled down to live in England. And it was then, too, that he did the Abigail Brom- field, which so realistically gives the effect of a windy day, the John Adams now in the pos- session of Harvard College, and the exquisite portrait of John Quincy Adams, which hangs in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. But the dignified portrait of John Hancock and the piquant one of Dorothy, his wife, both of which are also in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, are very good examples of Copley's early work and belong to the period before he left Boston.
Much of the value of Copley's portraits we owe to the infinite pains which he took. He sadly tried the patience of his subjects by bis
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minute care and thorough fidelity in the execu- tion of a picture. So absorbed was he in the canvas before him that he required that his sitter should always bring a friend to keep up the flow of conversation and produce the ani- mation which it was his task to bring out in line and color. No persuasions, no complaints of fatigue, could induce him to slight the most unimportant detail. And after hours of patient attention, the unfortunate sitter would often return to find every trace of the preceding day's work obliterated, and the faithful artist alertly ready to begin his task all over again !
Gilbert Stuart, who probably ranks next to Copley as an American painter of portraits, was also New England born. Unlike Copley, however, he had enjoyed every advantage of study and travel before he began his life-work. It is very much to be doubted whether, if the conditions of Stuart's life had been like those which confronted Copley, he would ever have attained eminence as a painter. Still, having made the human head his sole and lifelong object of study, he was able to produce por- traits of supreme excellence. Of Washington alone he has left us three likenesses of the first rank, namely, the " Athenaeum " portrait, the " Vaughan " portrait and the " Lansdowne " portrait. His " Athenaeum " portrait is held to be the typical Washington and perhaps the
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bjest work he ever did; but the spirited paint- ing of Washington's friend, General Henry Knox, as he stands out, vigorous and soldierly, in the canvas at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, should be given high rank in any list of this artist's work.
Stuart was not so fortunate as Copley in the period of his zenith, though he was far more fortunate in early opportunities. Cosmo Alex- ander, an artist over here on a visit, had seen some of the Rhode Island lad's early work and was so impressed by its promise that he took Stuart back to England with him, promising to put him in the way of good instruction over there. But Alexander died as soon as he reached home, and his protege was left friendless and penniless in a strange and hostile land. After two years of struggle to educate himself at Glas- gow University, Stuart returned to America in the hope of being able to support himself here as a painter. But the rich men of the country did not feel rich just then, and with war clouds looming over their heads, sitting for their por- traits was the last thing they had heart to undertake. So Stuart again sailed for Europe, taking refuge this time with West, that excel- lent American and friend of all rising young artists. West taught him gladly and gave him a home in his family. In ten years the young American was able to set up a studio for hiin-
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self and command such prices as no one Reynolds and Gainsborough then charged.
In the height of his success, however, Stuart grew suddenly desirous of returning to his native land and, abandoning all his English friends, he sailed, in 1792, for New York. Two years there, followed by a sojourn in Philadel- phia and another in Washington, intervened before he came back to New England. Then he settled down to spend the rest of his life in Boston. For many years his home and painting-room was in Washington Place, Fort Hill, where his geniality and charm as a conver- sationalist drew many sitters, all of whom soon assumed in his presence their most characteris- tic expressions and so met half-way the artist's determination to get a faithful portrait. Gil- bert Stuart was a great physiognomist. He could read a man's character almost from a glance at his face. When Talleyrand was in Boston, he went to call at the artist's studio; after the wily Frenchman had withdrawn, Stuart observed to a friend, " If that man is not a villain the Almighty does not write a legible hand." Events proved that the artist had read aright the meaning of Talleyrand's evil face. Stuart used to say of his work that portrait painting, as he conceived it, was " copy- ing the works of God and leaving clothes to the tailors and mantua-makers." Stuart had the
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gift of pungent expression and of quick wit. When he met Samuel Johnson in Europe, and that personage, after expressing great aston- ishment that the American did not look more like a red Indian, inquired solicitously where he had learned English, Stuart flashed back: " Not from your dictionary."
A contemporary of Stuart's was Trumbull, whose account of a visit to Copley's studio was quoted above. Trumbull, like Stuart, studied in England with West. But before enjoying this opportunity to cultivate the art of his choice, he had been successively a schoolmaster, a Revolutionary officer, and a man of business in Paris. It was Franklin, whom he met in the French capital, who gave him a letter to West. On the arrival in London of the news of Andre's , execution, Trumbull, because he was the son of the Revolutionary governor of Connecticut * and had been aide-de-camp to Washington, fell under suspicion as a spy and was thrust into prison. At the end of eight months, he was released, but only through the potent influence of West. West believed that Trumbull would win his greatest success as a painter of historical scenes, and it was in the studio of the Quaker that " Bunker's Hill " and the " Death of Montgomery" were both painted. Sir Joshua
i Trumbull's mother was the great-granddaughter of John Rob- inson, who led the Pilgrim Fathers out of England and was their pastor until they sailed from Holland for the New World.
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Reynolds, seeing the latter canvas there, ad- mired it extremely and congratulated West on his improvement in color; he was not at all pleased when told that the work had been done by Trumbull, one of whose portraits he had recently dismissed with the peevish criticism that the coat in it looked " like bent tin."
The various personages in Trumbull's famous ' Declaration of Independence " were all por- traits, for though the work was started while the painter was staying with Jefferson in Paris, years were spent in making the faces in the picture faithful to their distinguished originals. " Mr. Hancock and Samuel Adams," writes Trumbull, "were painted in Boston; Mr. Bartlett at Exeter, New Hampshire, etc." Yet the patriotic portrait by which this artist is best remembered to-day is of a man who was not of the Signers' group — Alexander Hamil- ton. This very brilliant and beautiful work is now in the Yale University School of Fine Arts, which has a rich collection of Trumbull's work.
The arrangement by which these pictures came to Yale is highly creditable to both parties concerned in that it made a dignified and com- fortable old age possible for the artist and brought to Yale treasures which will steadily increase in value with the passing of the years. In return for an annuity of one thousand dol- lars to be paid to Trumbull by Yale in quarterly
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installments from 1837 until his death, his paintings were there assembled in what was known as the Trumbull Gallery. And when the artist passed away, he and his wife were buried on the Yale campus, close to the work to which he had given his life. Trumbull's wife was a very great beauty, as her husband's portrait of her, which is also at Yale, clearly shows. This portrait is almost her only history. But though " her early name and lineage were never divulged ", we know to-day that she was an Englishwoman, the daughter of Sir John Hope. Many are the stories told of her eccen- tricities and of the occasions when she was over- come " by something stronger than tea." But her husband's tribute to her is all that we need to quote here:
" In April, 1824, 1 had the misfortune to lose my wife, who had been the faithful and beloved companion of all the vicissitudes of twenty-four years. She was the perfect personification of truth and sincerity, — wise to counsel, kind to console, by far the more important and better half of me, and with all, beautiful beyond the usual beauty of women."
These words we may well believe, as we gaze at the exquisite portrait, which was the artist's memorial to his lost love. For daintiness is written all over these delicate features and this rose-leaf skin, while the fluffy locks, which peep
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out from under the enchanting cap, and the evanescent smile on a very sweet mouth all show Mrs. Trumbull to have been a woman of much charm — 'as well as of great beauty.
Washington Allston, who was a friend of Stuart's and who, though born in South Caro- lina, passed the greater part of his professional life in Boston and Cambridge, was another artist renowned in the New England of his day though his fame was at no time due to his suc- cess as a portrait painter.
A very dear friend of Allston's was Edward G. Malbone, painter of miniatures. James Peale was an early artist in this field, and an Irish gentleman named Ramage executed many small likenesses in Boston in 1771. But Mal- bone, who was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1777, easily outstripped them all and at the early age of seventeen was successfully executing ■ miniatures in Providence. The spring of 1796 saw him fairly established as a miniature painter in Boston, after which New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston were, in turn, his homes. From the Southern city he sailed, for the sake of his never-rugged health, to Europe, accompanied by Allston; and West was very anxious that he should settle in London. But Malbone was a devout American and was resolved that, even if his span proved to be a short one, he would pass it in the land of his birth; he died in May,
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1807. Yet Malbonc has left behind him work so exquisite that his name will never cease to occupy a high place among the great artists of America. " He had the happy talent," Allston wrote of him, " of elevating the character with- out impairing the likeness." Remarkable as this was in his miniatures of men, it was still more to be noted in the women he painted. " No woman ever lost any beauty from his hand; the fair would become still fairer under his pencil." His miniature of Mrs. Richard Derby of Boston, herewith reproduced, bears this out, I think.
Samuel F. B. Morse, much better known as the inventor of the electric telegraph than as a painter, — though he did some portraits which are very creditable likenesses, — Francis Alex- ander, and Chester Harding are other New Englanders who were prolific portrait painters in the early nineteenth century. Alexander, born in Windham County, Connecticut, in February, 1800, started out in life as a school- master, and while free of routine duties for a few days, — because of some slight indisposition, — attempted to reproduce in water-color the evan- escent colors of some fish he had caught. His mother encouraged him, and Trumbull lent him heads to copy. Then, with infinite difficulty, he scraped together money enough to go to New York for a short period of study, after which he
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set up as a professional painter. A commission came to him to paint a family at Providence, Rhode Island, and when this had been success- fully executed, he went to Boston, where his work was soon in great demand by reason of its intelligence and sensibility.
Great as was Alexander's vogue, it paled, hi ever, before that of Chester Harding, a self- taught New Englander, who, in 1823, became so much the fashion that even Stuart was neglected and used to ask sarcastically : " How goes the Harding fever? " Harding was boi in 1792, in the little mountain village of Conway, Massachusetts, of a family so poor that at the age of twelve he " hired out " to a farmer in a near-by town for the modest sum of six dollars a month. When Chester was fourteen, the family emigrated to Western New York, and very fascinating is the story ' of this promising lad's subsequent rise to fame and fortune. Few were the eminent men of the United States that Harding did not put on canvas during the first thirty years of his career; and in London, well, he made likenesses of many great per- sonages of the day, including the poet Rogers. Harding was a most buoyant personality, with a delightful sense of humor. He was always especially delighted at the story of a lady who
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had recently died and whose pet cat had for several days been wandering dejectedly about the house in search of something which she missed. At last she entered a room where a Harding likeness of her late mistress was stand- ing on a sofa. The creature at once gave a bound and tried to settle herself in her accus- tomed place on the old lady's lap.
When the artist returned to New England from his sojourn abroad, the first picture that he painted was that of Emily Marshall, then the reigning beauty of Boston. He declares that he did not succeed to his own satisfaction in the resulting portrait, and it is certainly hard to understand, from this sole record of the great beauty, why workingmen should have been willing to forego their noonday meal merely to look upon her face. Harding's por- traits of Webster and many other celebrities were very highly esteemed in his day and are still interesting as likenesses. But the man was far greater than his painting, I take it; it was undoubtedly to his simple, frank, social nature rather than to his power as an artist that he owed his astonishing success.
Other popular portrait painters of old New England were John Hazlitt, who executed many likenesses in Hingham, soon after the Revolu- tion; Ralph Earle, who painted many Con- necticut people in something of the Copley
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manner; and Joseph Ames, who is associate with many pictures of Webster.
G. P. A. Healy, who was born in 1807 i lived to be nearly ninety, was a prolific painter of New England people. Among those who sat to him were Longfellow, Webster, John Quincy Adams, and Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis. His immense historical picture, " Webster replying to Hayne," which hangs in Eaneuil Hall, Boston, contains no less than one hundred and thirty portraits.
Portrait painters, then as now, were for the rich and great, however. Most of us would never leave any counterfeit presentment behind for our sorrowing friends if we had to depend on portrait painters to preserve our features. And this is the very reason why we have ! few likenesses, save of the well-to-do, before the days of the miniature, the silhouetU the wax portrait, and the daguerreotype. Ma: bone made miniatures for fifty dollars; daguerr otypes could be had for about three dolla: apiece. The middle ground, both from point of view of art and of expense, Was occupies by the wax portrait, that interesting and elusiv likeness modeled in relief, about which Mrs Charles K. Bolton has recently written so de- lightfully ' and of which the Oliver Holdei
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portrait, herewith reproduced, furnishes an ex- cellent example.
The beginnings of wax modeling as an art are lost in a past which is beyond history, but those desirous of learning all that may be known on this subject are referred to Mrs. Bolton's interesting brochure. For our purposes it will suffice just to touch here on the fact that Patience Lovell Wright, an American of Quaker descent, modeled portrait heads in wax, when left a widow in 1769, and acquitted herself with so much skill that Horace Walpole deigned to bestow high praise on her portraits of the Eng- lish aristocracy. Her full-length portrait of Lord Chatham in his official robes was accorded the further honor of a place in Westminster Abbey. To-day Patience Wright is referred to by experts who are also historians as our second American artist.
Following Mrs. Wright, though evidently some distance behind, was John Christian Rauschner, a Dane, who modeled a number of Salem people (about 1810) and who executed also our Oliver Holden, now owned by Frank J. Lawton, of Shirley, Massachusetts. The wax in this portrait, as in all the portraits made by Rauschner, is colored all the way through, only the small parts, fike eyes, eyebrows, and shadows being painted in. Rauschner's work is in lower relief than Mrs. Wright's and shows
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somewhat less skill in handling the facial muscles. " Nevertheless his portraits are fas- cinating, and call us back," as Mrs. Bolton well says, " to a time that is gone. The ladies are all so genteel in their dotted muslin gowns, their hair done up with combs or covered with queer mobcaps. And each lady has some favorite ring or brooch in facsimile upon her finger or in her dress. Curls are there in infinite variety, coyly hanging before the ear or more obviously upon the forehead. The gentlemen, too, are bedight in their best, with their black or brown coat and stock. Some wore frills and some wore neck-cloths with long ends." Oliver Holden's mobile face, with its deep dimples, looks out over a trimly fitted stock. It is easier to con- nect this face with the titled Irishman who was Holden's kin than with Coronation.
Another modeler in wax, who did portraits of many New England people, was Robert Ball Hughes, who was born in London in 1806 but lived most of his life in Dorchester, Massachu- setts. Hughes's reliefs were all modeled in white wax, and he worked for many years to find a formula by means of which he could pro- duce a composition evenly and permanently white. In his quest he was successful, but died with his secret still untold. His portraits are all very delicately modeled, a particularly beauti- ful example of his best work being the portrait
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of Mrs. Mary Miller Quincy, wife of the second Mayor Quincy of Boston, now in the possession of Mrs. Mary Quincy Thomdike of Boston.
Practically contemporaneous with the wax portrait was the silhouette, which used to be ex- changed among friends early in the nineteenth century, very much as photographs are to-day. The silhouette has been called the poor relation of the miniature and the forerunner of the daguerreotype. Black profile portraiture, at its best, and as practised in Europe, was a thing of real beauty, — almost worthy to take its place with the best miniature painting. At its worst, " paper cutting " was a quaintly appealing handicraft interesting to the social historian because of the side-lights it throws on men and manners of a vanished day.
Strange confusion has arisen in the mind* nf many admirers of silhouettes on account of the name. Black profile portraiture wnn prac- tised in Europe long before Etieniir dr Mil houette economized in the public Hikhht tin partment of Louis XV, cut |H>rlrnil<» of Ilia friends for a pastime, and no c.mmv\ llir nil* nf the day to call by his name wliatevi-r whu r>ln>it|f and common. For of eourw Miffw |im|«*i- pit! traits were very cheap crtnpnrfd hi » |wlnllHjt on canvas, a delicate mininlmr nt pvmi (lie i-mmi paratively low-priced w«* |«*Hhtlh. " 'Hit* days of fustian and the frmMnHnt wert« i-cHilMtf f
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paper portraits instead of painting; then thi apothecary picture-man, as Ruskin calls th< photographer Daguerre." *
Originating in France, and flourishing greatly in Germany at the period when Goethe and hi: friends were making literature and history a< the Court of Weimar, the silhouette sooi reached England and penetrated through roy alty and the nobility to the middle and thei to the lower classes. It is curious to think ol George III, that ogre of New England, sitting for a scissors portrait to his daughter, th< Princess Elizabeth; and it is a far cry from th( silhouette as a diversion for royalty to th< itinerant artist thus delightfully described bj Sam Weller in the inimitable letter to Mary:
" So I take the privilege of the day, Mary my dear, — as the genTm'n in difficulties die ven he valked out of a Sunday — to tell yoi that, the first and only time I see you, you] likeness was took on my hart in much quickei time and brighter colours than ever a likenes) was took by the profeel macheen (wich p'raps you may have heerd on, Mary, my dear) altho' it does finish a portrait and put the frami and glass on complete, with a hook on the enc to hang it up by, and all in two minutes and e quarter."
Mrs. Bolton cleverly observes that in Eng
1 " History of Silhouettes," by E. Nevill Jackson.
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land, professional silhouetting, at any rate, started with Mrs. Pyburg, who made black paper portraits of King William and Queen Mary. " After reading English books upon silhouettes, you feel that you should as soon forget your mother's name, or the date of the Battle of Hastings, as forget Mrs. Pyburg. She began things, she is like Adam and Eve; and after Mrs. Pyburg, nothing, until in the early nineteenth century England began to send us here in America her prodigies."
One silhouettist from England who made a great success in America was Master Hubard, so called from the fact that he began the prac- tice of his profession at the early age of twelve. When he was seventeen, he landed in New York, and for many years itinerated in the United States, making silhouettes at a cost of fifty cents apiece. While in Boston, Hubard worked at the Exchange Coffee House, cutting full- length portraits by hand in twenty seconds. Mr. Joye and Mr. Bache were other silhouettists who practised their art in New England, but the true successor of Master Hubard was un- doubtedly Master Hanks, whom we find ad- vertised in 1828 as " capable of delineating every object in nature and art with extraordinary correctness."
A silhouettist of the early nineteenth cen- tury, who was of real New England stock, was
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William M. S. Doyle, who, in December, 1811, advertised ■ as follows:
Wm M. S. DOYLE
Miniature and Profile Painter
Tremont Street, Boston, next House north of the Stone-Chapel, the late residence of R. G. Amory, esq. Continues to execute Likenesses in Miniature and Profile of various sizes (the latter in shade or natural colours) in a style peculiarly striking and elegant, whereby the most forcible animation is obtained.
Some are finished on composition, in the manner of the celebrated Miers, of Li/ndon. '.'Prices of Profiles — from So cents to 1, S & 5
dollars. Miniatures — IS, 15, 18 and SO dollars.
One of Doyle's cuttings, while in Boston, was of Bishop Cheverus, Boston's Roman Catholic prelate of fragrant and gracious memory. Doyle is particularly interesting as the only Boston silhouettist of any note and because he was the partner of Daniel Bowen, who, in 1791, es- tablished a museum opposite the Bunch of Grapes Tavern on State Street. In 1795, Bowen and Doyle were at the corner of Brorafield and Tremont Streets. But here they were visited by fire in 1803 and again in 1807.
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William King, another American silhouettist, thus advertises his art in the New Hampshire Gazette of Tuesday, October 22, 1805: "Will- iam King, taker of Profile likenesses, respect- fully informs the ladies and gentlemen of Ports- mouth that he will take a room at Col. Wood- ward's on Wednesday next, and will stay ten days only to take profile likenesses. His price for two profiles of one person is twenty-five cents, and frames them in a handsome manner with black glass in elegant oval, round, or square frames, gilt or black. Price from fifty cents to two dollars each." Silhouettes at the rate of two for a quarter would seem to be within the reach of pretty much anybody who wanted to have a picture taken. It was high time for Edouart to come over from England and raise the standard of this curious and in- teresting art!
Black paper pictures were called silhouettes first in England, — and by the Frenchman chiefly responsible for their great vogue there and in America, Auguste Edouart. Edouart had been obliged to leave France for political reasons and, having lost nearly all his property in Hol- land (in 1813), found himself in England with scarcely any money and so advertised that he would give French lessons. This not proving a satisfactory source of income, he began to make portraits out of human hair, proceeding from
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this to cut profiles by hand as a form of protest against the disrepute into which this work had fallen by the introduction of mechanical de- vices. His portraits were almost always cut in full length, because he believed that this was the only way to make an accurate likeness, and he was quite successful in catching character- istic poses and gestures. It was his habit in the British Isles to travel from one town to another in the practice of his profession and once, at Edinburgh, he made no less than six hundred likenesses in a fortnight. In 1835 he wrote i book which he called " Silhouette Likenesses." Edouart kept a careful record of the people whose profiles he perpetuated, and he had a very high sense of personal honor in the matter of guarding the features committed to his care. " Ladies are never exhibited," he advertised, " nor duplicates of their likenesses either sold or delivered to anyone but themselves or by their special order."
In 1839, taking with him his volumes of English, Scotch, and Irish portraits for pur- poses of exhibition, this interesting artist sailed for America, where he stayed for ten years, making innumerable portraits in New York, Saratoga, Philadelphia, Norwich, and Boston, as well as in many cities of the south. In Cam- bridge he cut Longfellow, the Appleton family, the president of Harvard, and dozens of pro-
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fessors and students of the college, while in Boston he made a shadow picture, against his own home background, of the Reverend John Pierpont and family as well as of several other well-known people.
Many of the portraits which Edouart did while in America were sunk in the shipwreck which he experienced on his way home in De- cember, 1849. He was then an old man, and exposure, added to the loss of the greater part of his life's work, so preyed upon his mind and health that he never again practised his pro-
America was by no means dependent upon Europe, though, for successful practitioners of this Black Art. William Henry Brown, a na- tive of Charleston, South Carolina, made very many paper portraits all over the United States, establishing in each town which he visited a shop which, for the time, bore the name of the Brown Gallery. He, too, has written a book * about his sitters and has illus- trated the work with twelve of his silhouettes, mostly full lengths with elaborate backgrounds, as well as with facsimile autograph letters of the people whose portraits are .reproduced in the volume.
1 " Portrait Gallery of Distinguished American Cituseui, with biographical Sketches," by William H. Brown, and facsimiles of original letters. Hartford. Published by E. B. and E. C. K"
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Enter now Daguerre, " the apothecary pic- ture man! " Samuel F. B. Morse, who was an artist as well as a scientist, was the principal means of introducing to this country the results of Daguerre's experiments. In 1839 Morse journeyed to Paris for the purpose of securing a patent covering his telegraphic apparatus; but he had made all arrangements to return to America when, in conversation with the Amer- ican Consul, Mr. Robert Walsh, he one morn- ing remarked: " I do not like to go home with- out having first seen Daguerre's results." Mr. Walsh suggested that Daguerre be invited by Morse to see his telegraphic apparatus, in re- turn for which courtesy he would doubtless invite the American to see his pictures. And it so fell out.
Daguerre had not yet succeeded in making portraits, and he told Professor Morse that he doubted if it could be done; but already he could show absolutely perfect images of streets, buildings, interiors, and works of art, and for these Morse's enthusiasm was unbounded. Then Niepce, who for fifteen years had been experimenting independently with methods of fixing the image of the camera obscura — an in- strument known for nearly two centuries — met Daguerre, and the two pooled their discoveries. Thus the process was pushed forward to a point where pictures of people were made possible.
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France, which had the honor of this great dis- covery, honored itself by treating with ex- treme liberality the two men who had brought their experiments to a successful issue. Daguerre was given an annual pension of six thousand francs and Niepce one of four thousand francs, on condition that they publish their process. This condition was accepted, and Daguerre hastened at once to put Morse, who had mean- while returned to America, in possession of all knowledge necessary to practise this new art with entire success. At once Morse's brothers, Sidney E. and Richard C. Morse, fitted up on the corner of Nassau and Beekman Streets, New York, what they called their " palace of the sun."
Then, in the fall of 1839, there arrived in this country a teacher direct from Daguerre himself, Francois Gouraud, who, in March, 1840, en- joyed a very successful season in Boston, finally publishing a pamphlet embodying his lectures and giving a " provisory method for taking Human Portraits." This method was by no means simple. Not only must the room be of certain shape and kind, but " the chair on which the person sits must be of yellow wood. The person, if a man, must be dressed in a clear gray coat; pantaloons of a little deeper hue; a vest of a fancy ground, — yellow, orange, if possible, — with figures of a color to make a
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contrast; the whiteness of the shirt contrasting with a cravat of a gray ground either a little less dark or more deep than the coat. The toilet of a lady should be of the same shades, and in all cases black must be constantly avoided, as well as green and red." That the eyes of the subject should be closed was, at first, considered another condition necessary to success. The time of the exposure was from ten to twenty minutes.
Mr. Francis Colby Gray, a leader in Boston art affairs and one of the directors of Harvard College, interested himself greatly in Gouraud and made it possible for his first classes to as- semble in the sacred precincts of the Massa- chusetts Historical Society; but by the end of 1840, the methods this teacher advocated had been so greatly improved that several men in Boston were taking daguerreotypes as a means of livelihood, and the traveling car began to penetrate into all parts of New England.
" Monday was looked upon as the best day for business," observes Mrs. D. T. Davis — to whose delightful article,' "The Daguerreo- type in America," I find myself deeply indebted, " because of the Sunday night courtship, the first outcome of which was the promise to ex- change daguerreotypes. No less sure than Mon- day itself came the gentleman escorting his
1 McClure't Magatint, November, 1896.
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sweetheart. He selected the most expensive cases and paid for both pictures. And it was a happy man in these instances that put the maiden's picture into his pocket,, for he knew there was but one ' counterfeit presentment ' of her in existence, and he had it."
The most famous studio in New England was that of Southworth and Hawes, which opened at 19 Tremont Row, Boston, in 1841, and which, for more than half a century, kept on doing business at this same old stand. Webster and Pierce, Garrison and Sumner, Wendell Phillips, Emerson, and Charlotte Cush- man were a few of the distinguished people of whom Mr. Hawes here made likenesses. But, happily, the time had now come when people who were neither rich nor distinguished could have their pictures taken.
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CHAPTER IX
READING BOOKS
IT was to be expected, I suppose, the motive behind the settlement of New England being what it was, that the only books cordially recommended by pastors and masters, in early days, were those which dealt with the relation of the soul to God. " When thou canst read," counselled Thomas White, a Puritan minister, " read no ballads and romances and foolish books, but the Bible and the Plaine Man's Pathway to Heaven, a very holy book for you. Get the Practice of Piety, Mr. Baxter's call to the Unconverted, Allen's Alarm to the Unconverted, and The Book of Martyrs."
In a catalogue of Harvard College, printed in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, there is no mention of any book by Addison, of any of the poems of Pope or of the many works which had recently been put out in Eng- land by Dryden, Steele, Young, and Prior. And not until the year 1722, according to so careful a chronicler as Alice Morse Earlc, were the works of Shakespeare advertised in Boston !
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The scarcity and limited scope of books, out in the country, even as late as the first quarter of the nineteenth century, is painful to con- template. It is doubtful if any typical New England village could have assembled more than one hundred books — outside of religious works! A bookish boy, looking about for some- thing to read, would perhaps have been able to lay hands on Josephus, Rolltn's " Ancient His- tory ", " The Pilgrim's Progress ", Pollok's " Course of Time ", Cowper, and a few lives of celebrated preachers. Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, Addison, and Johnson might have been found lurking in secret corners, but would have been by no means easily accessible. And Byron, Burns, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Keats were then as caviare to the general, as the poems of Tagore might be to Down East farmers to-day.
No " profane " author was ever quoted in a discourse; and every author was "profane", who did not write upon religious subjects and along evangelical lines. It was the settled policy of the religious leaders of New England to ignore all poets except Milton and all prose writers except Bunyan. In fact, the Bible was held to be the only really reputable book. And so the Bible was read over and over again. Robert Hale records in his diary that he is read- ing the Bible for the one hundred and thirty- fourth time!
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Now and then, however, one comes upon surprising evidence that the great books of the world were sometimes read in remote corners of New England. Who would think to find the fisherfolk of Siasconset, on the island of Nantucket, reciting long passages from Butler's " Hudibras " and reading Josephus with deep enjoyment in the eighties of the eighteenth century? According to so veracious a chronicler as Crevecoeur,1 however, this really happened. He himself wondered about it as much as we could. " No one knows who first imported these books," he comments. And then, concern- ing the Nantucketers' fondness for Butler's witty satire on Puritanism, adds: " It is some- thing extraordinary to see this people, pro- fessedly so grave, and strangers to every branch of literature, reading with pleasure the former work, which would seem to require some degree of taste and antecedent historical knowledge. They all read it much, and can by memory re- peat many passages."
This was no more typical reading among late eighteenth-century fisherfolk, of course, than were the books enjoyed by Mary Moody Emer- son typical literary provender of a maiden born just before the outbreak of the Revolution. The early reading of Emerson's aunt included Milton, Young, Akenside, Samuel Clarke, and
1 " Letters from An American Farmer."
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Jonathan Edwards; and later she greatly en- joyed Plato, Plotinus, Marcus Antoninus, Stewart, Coleridge, Cousin, Herder, Locke, Madame De Stael, Channing, Mackintosh, and Byron. Of no other woman of her generation, probably, was it true that " Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus were as venerable and organic as Nature in her mind." But of many of her con- temporaries it might very likely have been said, as her distinguished nephew further says of her, that " Milton and Young had a religious authority in their minds and nowise the slight merely entertaining quality of modern bards." '
In very few men, indeed, were the Latin and Greek sages " organic." The languages of the ancients were, of course, studied, as languages, by youths who were preparing for the ministry; but most New England parsons did not regard the classics of these tongues "with any great affection, for the reason that they served to keep alive familiarity with false gods.
A notable exception in this way was the Reverend John Checkley, who, in 1738, suc- ceeded the Reverend Arthur Browne as rector of the King's Church, Providence. Browne had been educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and is said to have come to America with Dean Berkeley. In 1730 he entered upon his pastor- ate at Providence and served there very ac-
1 Atlantic Monthly, ]
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ceptably until he resigned to become the rector of St. John's Church in Portsmouth, New Hamp- shire. Checkley, his successor in the Rhode Island town, was a man of varied and colorful history. Born in Boston in 1680 and educated at the Boston Latin School, he went to Oxford to complete his studies and then traveled ex- tensively in Europe, collecting everywhere man- uscripts, paintings, and books. After which he returned to Boston and opened a book-shop. This was in 1717.
Checkley called his little shop the " and Blue-Gate " and, being the man he wa soon made it a literary center. But, before ma months, the shocking news leaked out that t strange doctrine of the Apostolic Succession was here being urged. Following which, bookseller turned author and publisher and, support of his extraordinary views, offered the Boston public two pamphlets, which stirred the Massachusetts authorities tha Checkley was at once called upon to take oaths of allegiance and abjuration. This 1 proprietor of the " Crown and Blue-Gate ' declined to do and, as an alternative, paid fine of six pounds.
Apparently Checkley had already made i his mind to become a priest of the Church < England; but fourteen long years passed before he was accepted as a candidate, and when i
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was, the parish offered him was the one Browne had just left. But he accepted gladly the op- portunity which thus offered to follow the ca- reer he had chosen for himself and, journeying to Providence, established himself and his books in the comfortable rectory which Browne had generously endowed. At this time, his library numbered nearly a thousand volumes and in- cluded many folios and quartos in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, and other languages. To which he was able to add, upon the death of his parishioner and friend, John Merritt, in 1770, thirty pounds' worth of " Books which he may chuse out of my Library according to the value in the Catalogue." Mr. Merritt was also a bibliophile, and among his books were many volumes of English poetry and essays, such classics as Csesar, Horace, Marcus Aurelius, and the plays of Sophocles, works on agricul- ture, dictionaries, and gazetteers as well as a considerable array of volumes dealing with theology. Checkley chose wisely from among all these, and since he was a man who used books as well as owned them, the influence of the treasures in his possession was enormous. For he eked out his slender income by tutoring, and he often lent his books to his pupils. Thus he helped greatly to foster, in pre-Revolution- ary Providence, the habit of reading books. A century before his time, the largest library in
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this important town had been owned by William Harris and consisted of twenty-six volumes, eleven of which were law books.1
All this while scarcely anything of the first order, however, had been written in New Eng- land. The first two centuries of this country's history were precisely the centuries during which, in old England, poets, historians, novel- ists, and essayists had produced many immortal works. Yet, although many of the colonists were liberally educated men, no work of un- questionable genius appeared prior to Bryant's " Thanatopsis " and Irving's " Sketch Book.* The platitudes of the " Bay Psalm-Book about the average of our literary products and the verse of Anne Bradstreet is the besl that we can show up to the nineteenth century, It was not then recognized that the letters of Abigail Adams and the diary of Samuel Se1 were literature; it remained for our own day accord to these lively and veracious accoun' of contemporary occurrences the high stam they deserve. Mrs. Adams's friend, Me: Warren, on the other hand, was highly garded as a literary woman, though nobody i our time would have the patience to read h( tiresome poems and her long, dull tragedies.
The first " prolific " American author wi
on; >est
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Cotton Mather. He wrote upwards of four hundred books and found this occupation so congenial that he declared work to be his recre- ation, while play was to him a toil. Reading the results of his recreation would be a " toil " to-day, not to say the severest of hard labor, both because of their matter and their manner. Most of Mather's writings are a faithful mirror of the man, and the man, at any rate on his writing side, was a narrow-minded egotist. As a preacher, he seems to have been con- scientious and sincere; as a pastor, he was ten- der and devoted. But the fasts and vigils to which he subjected himself, the rules by which he governed every event in his life, are so faith- fully recorded in his four hundred books as to make almost any one of them painful.
The most famous production of this typic- ally Puritan writer was called " Magnalia Christ! Americana; or the ecclesiastical history of New England from its first planting, in the year 1620, unto the year of our Lord, 1698." The " Magnalia " was published in London in 1702; its author never said a truer word than when, in an unconsciously naive moment, he pronounced it " bulky." For this work is divided into seven parts and concerns itself with (1) The History of the Settlement in New England; (2) Biographies of governors; (8) Lives of eminent divines and others; (4) His-
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tory of Harvard College; (5) "The faith and order of the churches; " (6) Illustrious and wonderful providences; (7) Struggles of the New England churches with " their various adversaries " — the Devil, Separatists, Fauai- lists, Antinomians, Quakers, clerical impostors, and Indians. Professor Moses Coit Tyler pro- nounces this work, despite its great and obvious faults of style, the most famous book of all Cot- ton Mather's works and, what constitutes real praise, " the most famous book produced by any American during the Colonial time.'r We may as well accept this dictum; it car- ries with it no obligation to read the " Mag- nalia " in toto. One fact that no writer con- cerning old New England can blink, however, is that Cotton Mather has included in this ap- palling work pretty much everything that known about our early history.
" The Wonders of The Invisible Wrorld '* another famous product of Cotton Mather's tireless pen. This work, in a very special way, shows Mather in relation to his times. The age was one of delusions and superstition, and Cotton Mather was its chief exponent. He was as sure as he was sure of heaven that before the Puritans came to New England the Devil had reigned over this fair land. He believed, in fact, that his Satanic Majesty still reigned in-
1 " History of American Literature," Muses Coit Tyler, p. 80.
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termittently in the persons of certain of the new settlers. This was his explanation of witch- craft. He believed so firmly in witchcraft 'that he made other people believe in it; thus his in- fluence and his writings were very largely re- sponsible for the witch persecutions with which the pages of New England history are black- ened.
To credit Cotton Mather with having in- creased witchcraft is not to account for its early manifestations. Michelet's explanation is that in the oppression and dearth of every kind of ideal interest in rural populations, some safety-valve had to be found, and that there very likely were, at one time, organized secret meetings — actual witches' Sabbaths, so to say — to supply this need of sensation. The thing once started in a degenerate community grew, of course, by what it fed upon, just as suicidal mania and " disappearing girls " are increased, in our own day, by the screaming headlines of the yellow press. Within a few months, in Salem, several hundred people were arrested as witches and thrown into jail! Things soon came to such a pass that as Governor Hutchinson, the historian of the time, points out, the only way to prevent an accusation of witchcraft was to become an accuser oneself; just as, during the Reign of Terror in France, men of property and position frequently threw
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E| ,
J suspicion on their neighbors' heads, the bett
! to save their own.
p Cotton Mather had never heard of hypnotisi
'] and suggestion, but he had heard of the Dev
and, being convinced that the Devil was worl ing through witches, he held it as a sacred dut to write his conviction large. He had take under his personal care the Goodwin children who were believed to be witches, and had stuc ied their cases very carefully. Who, better tha he, could serve God by putting the Devil t
| flight?
. ' A bare outline of the facts about these famou
children, as given in Governor Hutchinson's ac
I '■ count and reproduced by Mr. Poole in th
r ;, " Memorial History of Boston," is as follows:
" In 1687 or 1688 . . . four of the childrei of John Goodwin, a grave man and good live
' at the north part of Boston, were generall;
believed to be bewitched. I have often hear persons who were in the neighborhood speak o the great consternation it' occasioned. Th children were all remarkable for ingenuity o temper, had been religiously educated, wer thought to be without guile. The eldest was i girl of thirteen or fourteen years. She ha< charged a laundress with taking away some o the family linen. The mother of the laundres was one of the wild Irish, of bad character, ani gave the girl harsh language; soon after wbic
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she [the Goodwin child] fell into fits which were said to have something diabolical in them. One of her sisters and two brothers followed her example, and, it is said, were tormented in the same part of their bodies at the same time, although kept in separate apartments and igno- rant of one another's complaints. . . . Some- times they would be deaf, then dumb, then blind; and sometimes all these disorders to- gether would come upon them. Their tongues would be drawn down their throats, then pulled out upon their chins. Their jaws, necks, shoul- ders, elbows and all other joints would appear to be dislocated, and they would make the most piteous outcries of burnings, of being cut with knives, beat, etc., and the marks of wounds were afterwards to be seen.
"The ministers of Boston and CharlestOwn kept a day of fasting and prayer at the troubled house; after which the youngest child made no more complaints. The others persevered and the magistrates then interposed, and the old woman was apprehended; but upon examination would neither confess nor deny, and appeared to be disordered in her senses. Upon the re- port of physicians that she was compos mentis, she was executed, declaring at her death the children should not be relieved."
The kind of book Cotton Mather would write from such data as this is more pleasantly imag-
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■
ined than perused. For here, ready to hand, were horrors after Mather's own heart. That he would squeeze every last drop of agony out of them goes without saying. Only less painful than the subject matter of this book is its style. Yet the hook was a " best seller " in its day, notwithstanding the fact that Cotton Mather here shows himself most pitiably a pedant.
Pedantry, to be sure, would necessarily mark a life so warped and stunted by precosity as was Mather's. "At the Age of little more than eleven years," he writes of himself, " I had composed many Latin exercises, both in prose and verse, and could speak Latin so readily, that I could write notes of sermons of the English preacher in it. I had conversed with Cato, Corderius, Terence, Ovid and Virgil. I had made Epistles and Themes; presenting my first Theme to my Master, without his requiring or expecting as yet any such thing of me; where- upon he complimented me Luudabilis Diligentia tua. I hat! gone through a great part of the New Testament in Greek. I had read con- siderably in Socrates and Homer, and I had made some entrance in my Hebrew grammar. And I think before I came to fourteen, I com- posed Hebrew exercises and Ran thro' the other Sciences, that Academical Students ordinarily fall upon."
Such a boyhood could not be expected to
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produce a man with great humanity; Cotton Mather is a perfect illustration of Buffon's con- tention that " style is the man himself." Thus, while his early writings are pedantic and big- oted, his later ones are steeped in bitterness. For he lived to see the downfall of the theoc- racy which had meant so much to him, and he suffered a grievous personal disappointment in not being elected president of Harvard Col- lege as his father had been before him.
It is in Mather's " Magnalia " that we first come upon the name of Anne Bradstreet, " whose poems, divers times printed, have afforded a grateful entertainment unto the ingenuous, and a monument for her memory beyond the stateliest marbles!" It is a pleasure to paas from the Mathers to the short and simple an- nals of New England's first woman-poet.
Anne Bradstreet 'a early days were passed in surroundings favorable to poetic development, and a good deal that is really beautiful may, therefore, be found in her verses. She was born in England in 1612; her father was stew- ard of the estates of the Puritan nobleman, the Earl of Lincoln, and the impressionable days of her childhood were many of them passed in the earl's library, among the treasures of which she was permitted to browse at will. When she reached the age of sixteen, she married Simon Bradstreet, a graduate of Cambridge
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University, and two years later sailed bravely away with hiiii to the rudenesses and hardships of New England. " I found a new world and new manners," she says, " at which my heart rose. But after I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it."
In 1644, having previously tried their fate in a number of other places, the Bradstreets settled on the outskirts of Andover, Massachu- setts; and there the poet lived the rest of her life and died in 1672. The house with which she is intimately associated (in North Andover) still stands. Its frame is massive, its walls are lined with bricks, and in its heart is an enormous chimney, heavily buttressed. Anne Bradstreet died in an upper chamber of this pleasant mansion, and on its sloping lawn to- day are trees which she long ago planted. It is believed that her remains were interred in the old burying-ground directly adjoining, but no trace of her grave can be found here.
Her poems, however, live and must be ac- corded a high place in any American anthology of verse. Almost all American singers have chanted either the sea or the changing beauties of some dearly loved river. It was a river of which Anne Bradstreet sang, the Merrimac. In certain lines of her Contemplations, inspired by this stream, we find the first authentically poetic note in American literature:
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" Under the cooling shadow of a stately elm,
Close sat I by a goodly river's side, Where gliding streams the rocks did overwhelm;
A lonely place, with pleasure dignified. I once that loved the shady woods so well, Now thought the rivers did the trees excel, And if the sun would ever shine, there would I dwell."
Anne Bradstreet was a very prolific poet, but Michael Wigglesworth stood not far behind her in the multitude of verses which he pro- duced. And his masterpiece, which bore the engaging title, The Day of Doom, exceeded in popularity any other work, whether in prose or verse, produced in America before the Revo- lution. Eighteen hundred copies of its first edition were sold within a single year, which implies, as Professor Tyler points out,1 the pur- chase of one copy by every thirty-fifth person then in New England. Surely, an astonishing record for an age when reading books of any kind was far from being a national habit.
This great poem which, with entire uncon- sciousness, attributes to the Divine Being " a character the most execrable to be met with, perhaps, in any literature, Christian or pagan," now impresses the reader only as a curious and interesting literary phenomenon; but its fearful
' New York, G. P. Put-
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lines seemed the literal truth to the first three or four generations who perused them. Joseph T. Buckingham mentions that even after the Revolution he read this book with great ex- citement and fright; and Lowell playfully re- marks that it " was the solace of every fireside, the flicker of the pine-knots by which it was conned perhaps adding a livelier relish to its premonitions of eternal combustion." Every- body believed devoutly in the Hell here so luridly pictured. It is not strange, therefore, that for more than a hundred years after its first publication, The Day of Doom continued to be the supreme poem of Puritan New England. Cotton Mather cheerfully predicted that it would continue to be read in New England until the day of doom itself should arrive.
Another large poem of Wigglesworth's had the curious title: Meat out of the Eater. This was first published about 1669 and served to comfort the afflicted of the Colonial age very much as Tennyson's In Memoriam comforted the bereaved of the mid-Victorian era. The full title of this poem is Meat out of the Eater; or. Meditations concerning the necessity, end, and usefulness of afflictions unto God's children, all tending to prepare them for and comfort them un der the Cross.
In spite of the enormous sales achieved by Wigglesworth, books were not yet bought at
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all generally in New England. When the Rev- erend Thomas Harvard, minister of King's Chapel, died (in 1736) happy in the belief that he would find " no Gout or Stone " in heaven; he left a library of " only ninety works, mostly small and of poor quality." Yet he was an active writer — perhaps of such books as this from the pen of a fellow-parson, which I find advertised in the Boston News-Letter of Septem- ber 9, 1725:
" There is now in the Press, & will soon be published, The Strange Adventures & Deliver- ances of Philip Ashton, of Marblehead, in New England. Who, being taken & forcibly de- tained about 8 Months on board the Pirate Low, afterwards made his escape on the Desolate Island of Roatan; where he liv'd alone for the space of Sixteen Months. With the surprising account of his Subsistence and Manner of Living there, and of many Deaths from which he was Rescued, by the Over-Ruling Providence of God; as also the Means of his final Deliver- ance & Return home, after almost 3 Years ab- sence. Drawn up & Published from his own Mouth, by the Rev. Mr. John Barnard, Pastor of a Church in Marblehead; With a Sermon on that Occasion, from Dan. Ill 17. To which is added a Short Account of Nicholas Meritt's Escape from the Pirate aforesaid, who was taken at the same time. To be sold by Samuel Qer-
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risk near the Brick Meeting House in Cornhill, Boston."
In the large towns, along with Bibles, Psalters, Watts *s Hymns, and sermons preached to pirates, there were offered for sale from 1744 to 1751, " The Pilgrim's Progress ", " The Academy of Compliments ", " Laugh and Be Fat ", " A History of Pirates ", " Reynard The Fox ", " Pamela ", " La Belle Assembly ", " Clarissa ", " Peregrine Pickle ", " Tom Jones ", La Fon- taine's " Fables '*, and " Robinson Crusoe ", besides the Spectator and other London period- icals of the day. Books were often purchased in cheap covers and rebound to suit the indi- vidual taste and purse. Hence the advertis* ments of many bookbinders may be found in the Colonial newspapers. Also there, in print for which a good rate per line has been paid, are found numerous advertisements for book; which have been borrowed but not returned Thus in 1748 and 1749 we read:
" The she-person who has borrowed Mr. Tho Brown's works from a gentleman she is well i quainted with, is desired to return them speedily.'
" The person that so ingeniously borrowed Sir Isaac Newton's works out of my printing office is earnestly desired to return them sp> ily, they being none of my property."
Again, in 1763, some one advertises ironically:
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" Lent to some persons who have too much modesty to return them unasked, — The first volume of Swift's works of a small edition. The ninth volume of the Critical Review. One volume of Tristram Shandy, and the first part of Candid. The owner's arms and name in each, who will be much obliged to the bor- rowers for the perusal of the above books when they have no further use for them."
Obviously there had occurred in our literary history by this time, what has been character- ized as an " aesthetical thaw." Before 1760 no such word as play was to be found in the vocabulary of grown New Englanders. When they were not working hard on their stony soil, they were reading hard in their " stony books of doctrine." To spend time on works of the imagination was considered an idle and sinful waste. But when the moral lyrics of Doctor Watts failed to satisfy the growing taste, there was a reaching out towards other and better books, and Milton, Dryden, Thomson, Pope, and Swift began to be admired, while stray copies of the Spectator were eagerly ab- sorbed by those so lucky as to possess them.
Robert B. Thomas, publisher of the " Old Fanner's Almanack ", offered, in 1797, an as- tonishingly varied list of books which might be had at his book-shop in Sterling, Massachusetts. For poetry there was Goldsmith, Milton,
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Thomson's " Seasons ", and Young 's " Night Thoughts", as well as Ovid's "Art of Love", and the lyrics of Doctor Watts. In the field of romances and novels, Fielding was represented by " Tom Jones " and " Joseph Andrews "; Smollett by *' Roderick Random ", Sterne by " The Sentimental Journey ", Miss Burney by "Evelina" and "Cecilia", — all classics, evi to-day. Mrs. Radcliffe's thrilling " Mysterit of Udolpho ", Henry Mackenzie's " Man Feeling ", Doctor Johnson's " Rasselas ", the highly correct " Sandford and Merton ", " The Arabian Nights ", " Robinson Crusoe ", Roche- foucault's " Maxims ", and the second part of Paine's " Age of Reason " are other readily recognized titles in this catholic collection. Also here is " The English Hermit: or the Un- paralleled Sufferings and Surprising Adven- tures of Philip Quarll, an Englishman: who was discovered by Mr. Dorrington, a British Mer- chant, upon an uninhabited Island, in the South- sea; where he lived about fifty years, without any human assistance." This work was ex- ceedingly popular in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, being a highly colored and not very wholesome variation of Defoe's inimi- table masterpiece.
The almanac in which this list of books was advertised is quite as interesting to us of to-day as are the names of the books which Mr. Thomas
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thus urged upon his readers. Almanacs date back to the very dawn of printing in America. For next after a sheet containing " The Free- man's Oath ", the first production that came from the printing press in this country was " An Almanac calculated for New England, by Mr. Pierce ", and printed by Stephen Daye, at Cambridge, in 1639. Almost annually there- after a similar publication was issued from this press; and in 1676 Boston produced its first almanac. The " Rhode Island Almanac ", which James Franklin published and which anticipated much of the wit and wisdom later to be found in Benjamin Franklin's famous " Poor Richard's Almanac ", dates from 1728. Three years earlier, Nathaniel Ames, physician and innkeeper of Dedham, Massachusetts, had begun to issue his " Astrpnomical Diary and Almanac ", a work which he continued to pub- lish until his death in 1764, and which, under his management, had acquired an enormous popularity throughout New England. Professor Tyler declares that Ames's almanac, which, from the first, contained in high perfection every type of excellence afterward illustrated in the almanac of Benjamin Franklin, was in most respects better than Franklin's, and was " the most pleasing representation we have of a form of literature that furnished so much en- tertainment to our ancestors, and that pre-
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serves for us so many characteristic hints of their life and thought."
For the purposes of the present chapter, this almanac is chiefly interesting in that it " carried into the furthest wildernesses of New England some of the best English literature; pronoun- cing there, perhaps for the first tune, the names of Addison, Thomson, Pope, Dryden, Butler, Milton; repeating there choice fragments of what they had written."
Perhaps it was by some such roundabout route as this that Jonathan Edwards, whom we certainly do not readily associate with the reading of novels, had his attention called, in the latter part of his life, to " Sir Charles Grandi- son ", and was so fascinated by the magic of Richardson's style that he is said to have ex- pressed to his son deep regret that he himself had not paid more attention to the manner of the messages he had to convey. But Edwards, without the aid of Richardson, had the funda- mental virtues of a writer: abundant thought and the ability to put his meaning clearly and forcefully. The sermons with which he searched men's souls were all written, and frequently " there was such a breathing of distress and weeping," as he read them from manuscript, " that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence that he might be heard." Sin, Hell, and Eternal Damnation
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formed the subjects of these discourses. The success of their appeal arose very largely from the fact that the people at whom they were aimed believed in the things of which Edwards wrote. Thus the explanation of this preacher's power is precisely the same as the explanation of the remarkable sales attained by Wiggles- worth's Day of Doom. If you happened to think it true, you would be greatly impressed by being told: " God holds you over the pit of hell much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire. . . . You are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.** *
To attribute to the Boston of Edwards* era the tales of Mother Goose would be exceedingly interesting; and many writers have not hesi- tated to make this claim, classing Elizabeth Vergoose, who once really lived in the leading city of New England, with Aesop, Perrault, La Fontaine, Anderson, Defoe, and the brothers Grimm as a writer of imaginative tales for children. All because John Fleet Eliot, great- grandson of Thomas Fleet, the Boston printer, in 1860 published in the Boston Transcript a wholly unsupported statement that these im- mortal rhymes had been written by his an- cestress, Mrs. Vergoose, basing his claim on the fact that Edward A. Crowninshield of Boston
1 Works of Jonathan Edwards, VII, p. 170.
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thought he had once seen in the library of the Antiquarian Society at Worcester a first edition of the " Melodies " put out by Thomas Fleet in 1719! Mr. Crowninshield had died when Mr. Eliot's article was published, and thorough and repeated search of the library has failed to re- veal to the eye of any other person this rather important piece of evidence. So that there appears to be not the slightest real foundation for what we may as well brand at once as a highly interesting myth. Those who care to ex- amine all the evidence and puncture this fiction for themselves are referred to the little volume in which William II. Whitmore threshed out the subject thoroughly some twenty odd years ago. Dismissing entirely the idea that Mother Goose was a name which originated in Boston or that the melodies proceeded in any measure from either the brain or the pen of Elizabeth Goose or Vergoose, mother-in-law of Thomas Fleet, the Boston printer, Mr. Whitinore shows in his book that the great vogue of the " Melo- dies " in this country may be clearly traced to an edition put out by Munroe and Francis of Boston about 1825. Isaiah Thomas, however, had previously printed several less well-known editions of these " sonnets from the cradle ", as he called them, copying his text, in all proba- bility, from an edition put out by John Newbery, the famous English publisher of story-books
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for children, about 1760. Newbery's test ap- pears to have been a translation from the French " Nursery Tales " of Charles Perrault, which first came out in 1695. For its frontispiece, this book had a picture of an old woman spinning and telling tales to a man, a girl, a little boy, and a cat. On a placard is written: " Contes de Ma Mere Loye." Mere Oye or Mother Goose is thus seen to be a cherished possession of French folk-lore; Thomas Fleet's great-grandson would never have dared to claim her for New England had Andrew Lang been lurking any- where about.1
There was little attempt to lure Puritan children to the reading of books by bestowing attractive titles ■ on the volumes offered them. One advertisement I have seen describes a cer- tain work as " in easey verse Very Suitable for children, entitled The Prodigal Daughter or The Disobedient Lady Reclaimed: adorned with curious cuts, Price Sixpence." The versa- tile Cotton Mather supplied " Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in Either England: Drawn
1 See the Oxford (1888) edition of Perrault.
1 Yet as this book is passing through the press, I hare discovered, in the Boston Public Library, " The Famous Tommy Thumb Little Story-Book," published in 1771 at Marlborough Street, Boston, at the back of which, and described ss " pretty stories that may be sung or told," are nine rhymes usually found in Mother Goose col- lections: the verses about the " wondrous wise " man; the rhyme concerning three children sliding on ice; Cock Bobbin (sic); "When I was a Little Boy " ; " 0 my Kitten " ; " This Pig went to Market "; " The Sow came in with a Saddle "; " Boys ana Girls, Come out to Play "; and " Little Boy Blue."
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out of the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls Nourishment. "
It was nearly a century after Mather's time before Isaiah Thomas, stretching the truth a little, advertised as " books Suitable for Chil- dren of all ages": "Tom Jones Abridged", " Peregrine Pickle Abridged ", " Vice in Its Proper Shape ", " The Sugar Plumb ", " Bag of Nuts Ready Crack'd ", " Jacky Dandy ", and the " History of Billy and Polly Friendly ". At the same time he offered as " Chapman's Books for the Edification and Amusement of young Men and Women who are not able to Purchase those of a Higher Price ", " The Amours and Adventures of Two English Gentlemen In Italy ", " Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony ", and " Laugh And Be Fat." Mrs. Shelton says that not long after this, the " book-closet " of the Salt Box House increased in wealth and variety by the addition of " The Stories of Sinbad and Aladdin ", " The History of Miss Betsey Thoughtless", "Theodore; or, the Gamester's Progress", "Charlotte Temple", and "The Coquette; or, the History of Eliza Wharton, a Novel Founded on Fact ", — all of which lightened the heavier reading of " Ex- ercises of the Heart, by the Late Pious and In- genious Mrs. Rowe ", " Lockhart's History of Scotland ", " Josephus ", and the serious books of the day.
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It would thus appear that by the early years of the nineteenth century the "aesthetical thaw" had reached Connecticut. The day of Bryant and Washington Irving approaches.
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CHAPTER X
THE OCCASIONAL JOURNEY
TO go on a journey was a very serious matter in old New England days — so serious that prayers were wont to be offered in church for the traveler's safe return, and public thanksgiving made when the trip had been successfully accomplished. There was, indeed, much more truth than poetry in the lines written by Madam Sarah Knight, that " fearfull female travailler ", on the window- pane of the house in Boston's North End after- wards occupied by Doctor Samuel Mather:
" Through many toils and many frights I have returned poor Sarah Knights Over great rocks and many stones God has preserv'd from fractured bones."
Sarah Knight's own account * of her journey is a classic. Born in 1666, she found it necessary, when about thirty-eight years old, to make the then " perilous journey " to New York, for the
' " Journey from Boston t« New York," 92 pp.: Albany. Little,
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sake of adjusting some property interests. The time was that of some of the most frightful In- dian massacres New England had ever known, and to set forth, on horseback, to make this difficult trip might well have tried the cour- age of a strong man; unusual, indeed, must needs be the pluck of the woman who would attempt the feat. Sarah Knight did attempt it, however, spending most of the time from October 2 to December 6, 1704, on the road.
The first night of her journey she rode until very late, in order to " overtake the post." The post from Boston to New York went once a week in the summer at this period and in the winter only once a fortnight. Apparently it was on " winter schedule " at the time of the intrepid Sarah's journey. At Billings's, a tavern twelve miles beyond Dedham, where she passed this first night away from home, she was greeted by the eldest daughter of her host thus: "Law for mee — what in the world brings you here at this time a night? I never see a woman on the road so Dreadfull late, in all the days of my versall life. Who are you? Where are you going? ... I told her she treated me very Rudely and I did not think it my duty to answer her unmannerly Questions. But to gett ridd of them I told her I come there to have the Posts company with me to-morrow on my Journey &c."
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Nothing about the Journal is more delicious than its vivid descriptions of the various beds upon which Sarah Knight rested her weary bones in the course of this great adventure. This is what she writes after the first night:
" I pray'd Miss to shew me to where I must Lodg. Shee conducted me to a parlour in a little back Lento,1 which was almost filled with the bedstead, which was so high that I was forced to climb on a chair to gitt up to ye wretched bed that lay on it, on which having Strecht my tired Limbs, and lay'd my head on a Sad-Colour'd pillow, I began to think on the transactions of ye past day."
On another occasion her room was shared, as was the country custom of that time (and indeed for many years later), by the men who had journeyed with her. Again, her sleep was interrupted by drunken topers in the room next her own, men who " kept calling for tother Gill which while they were swallowing, was some intermission. But presently like Oyle to fire encreased the flame. I set my Candle on a chest by the bedside, and setting up fell to my old way of composing my Resentments in the following manner:
" I ask thy aid O Potent Rum To charm these wrangling Topers Dum
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Thou hast their Giddy Brains possest The man confounded with the Beast And I, poor I, can get no rest Intoxicate them with thy fumes O still their Tongues till morning comes.
And I know not but my wishes took effect for the dispute soon ended with tother Dram."
Bridges across rivers were almost unknown in New England of this early date, so that on more than one occasion Madam Knight had to trust herself to an Indian canoe. Lovers of this ticklish craft will appreciate the following de- scription of our traveler's sensations:
"The Cannoo was very small & shallow so that when we were in she seemd redy to take in water which greatly terrify'd me, and caused me to be very circumspect, sitting with my hands fast on each side, my eyes stedy, not daring so much as to lodge my tongue a hairs breadth more on one side of my mouth than tother, nor so much as think on Lotts wife, for the very thought would have oversett our wherey."
In later life Madam Knight went herself into the business of tavern-keeping; on which ac- count her comments on the food served at the various ordinaries at which she stopped is of particular interest. She says:
" Landlady told us shee had some mutton which shee would broil. In a little time she bro't it in but it being pickled and my Guide
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said it smelt strong of head-sause we left it and paid six pence apiece for our dinners which was only smell." Again, " Having call'd for some- thing to eat the woman bro't in a Twisted thing like a cable, but something whiter, laying it on the bord, tugg'd for life to bring it into capacity to spread; which having with great pains ac- complished shee served a dish of Pork and Cabage I supose the remains of Dinner. Th> sauce was of deep purple which I tho't wi boiled in her dye Kettle; the bread was Indian and everything on the Table service agreeable to these. I being hungry gott a little down, but my stomach was soon eloy'd and what cabage I swallowed served me for a Cudd the whole day after."
Pumpkins in every style were offered to 01 traveler, but not being country-born, she hj no zest for this staple of the " times wherein old Pompion was a saint " and so refused the " pumpkin sause and pumpkin bred " which she everywhere encountered. Nor did she en- joy sitting at table with the slaves of her Con- necticut hosts. " Into the dish goes the bli Hoof as freely as the white hand ", she recoi in disgust, her criticism, however, being aim' at the color of the slave's fingers rather than the then universal custom of helping oneself b; dipping with the hand into the common dish.
The steed to which Madam Knight entrusi
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herself was undoubtedly a pacer, but whether it had the broad back and comfortable seat of the Narragansett variety we have no means of knowing. Nor can we say with certainty what manner of riding-garments she wore, though it is altogether probable that she was arrayed in a woolen round-gown, perhaps of camlet, made with puffed sleeves which came to the elbow and were finished with knots of ribbons and ruffles. Riding-habits were then never used. Over her shoulders she very likely wore a heavy woolen short cloak, on her hands long kid gloves with a kind of gauntlet, and on her head a close " round cap " which did not cover her ears. The " horse furniture " to which she makes frequent reference in the journal in- cluded her side-saddle and the saddle-bag which held her traveling wardrobe and her precious journal. We of to-day cannot be too grateful to her for the care with which she guarded this colorful record of an early journey from Boston to New York.
For, while we have a great many interesting accounts of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century journeys in New England, it is ex- ceedingly difficult to find anything whatever about inns and innkeepers of the seventeenth century. We do know, however, that as early as 1630 Lynn had the famous " Anchor " Tav- ern, which existed for one hundred and seventy
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years and served as a half-way house between Boston and Salem, and that in 1633 ordinary- keepers in Salem were forbidden to charge mi than sixpence for a meal.
The New England inn of these early was an institution, it must be understood, not a mere incident of travel and wayfare. Often an innkeeper would undertake an ordinary for entertaining strangers " at the earnest request of the town." Very frequently, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, the inn was put close to the meeting-house for the express purpose of providing a place in which worshippers cou thaw out after their long journey and between services, of the ever-comforting A whole book might be written — I have in- deed written one myself — on the evolution of this type of ordinary, and attendant changes in methods of travel from Sarah Knight's to 1822, when the journey from Boston to Ni York was made by stage to Providence by steamer the rest of the way. The fare on the coach was then three dollars, and the forty- mile journey was accomplished in four hoi and fifty minutes, thus causing the editor of Providence Journal to write: "If any one wi to go faster he may send to Kentucky charter a streak of lightning."
Providence early became a thriving coi mercial center largely by reason of the bi
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ness enterprise of the famous family of Brown. It also profited greatly by the fact that it was a natural terminus for stages and packet boats. From the popular " Crown Coffee House " of Richard Olney a stage-coach set out for Boston every Tuesday morning long prior to the Revo- lution, and by 1793 stages were leaving Boston and Providence on alternate days. The " Old Farmer's Almanack " for the first year of the nineteenth century announced:
" PROVIDENCE and NEW-YORK south- ern Mail Stage sets off from Israel Hatch's coffee-house, corner of Exchange-Lane, State Street, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, at 8 o'clock in the morning, and arrives at New- York every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday noon; leaves New -York every Tuesday, Thurs- day, and Saturday, at 10 o'clock in the morning, and arrives in Boston every Friday, Monday and Wednesday, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
" An extra stage runs every day to Provi- dence, from the above office."
Providence, it will thus be seen, had got its good share of the increased business, which caused Wansey to remark, in 1794 : " Eight years ago the road from Boston to Newhaven, a distance of an hundred and seventy miles, could scarcely maintain two stages and twelve horses; now it maintains twenty stages weekly, with upwards of an hundred horses; so much
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is travelling encreased in this district." In the summer of 1829, there were three hundred and twenty-eight stage-coaches a week running tween Boston and Providence, besides local stages to points nearer the city.
Of course, sightseers among others were thus enabled to make visits to the city. And some of them wrote down what they saw. Anne Royall, the pioneer Virginia publici recorded in 1826:
" Providence is a very romantic town, ly partly on two hills, and partly on a narrow plain, about wide enough for two streets. ... It con- tains fourteen houses for public worship, a col- lege, a jail, a theatre, a market-house, eight banks, an alms-house, part of which is a hospi- tal, and 12800 inhabitants. . . . Providence is mostly built of wood though there are many fine brick edifices in it. . . . The streets are wide and regular and most of them paved, with hand- some sidewalks, planted with trees. It is a very flourishing, beautiful town and carries on extensive trade with the East Indies. The to' of Providence owns six cotton factories, two woolen factories, twelve jeweller's shops, where jewelry is manufactured for exportation. . . . The citizens are mostly men of extensive capi- tal. . . . The citizens of Providence are mild, unassuming, artless, and the very milk of human
1 See my " Romantic Days in the Early Republic," p. 252 et uq.
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kindness. They are stout, fine looking men; the ladies, particularly, are handsome, and many of them highly accomplished. Both sexes . ... have a very independent carriage."
An independent carriage, though not of the type Mrs. Royall had in mind, figures promi- nently in the one other early account of New England travel which has come down to us. I mean David SewalTs description of the jour- ney he and Tutor Flynt took from Cambridge to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in June, 1754, by " chair ", as the first open vehicles were called. Flynt has been called " New England's earliest humorist ", and there seems no reason, as one reads Sewall's account of this memorable journey, to dispute the characterization. Mr. Flynt was eighty, and Sewall one of his pupils at Harvard, when:
" He sent for me to his chamber in the old Harvard Hall. Being informed that I was an excellent driver of a chair, he wished to know if I would wait upon him. ... I replied the proposition was to me new and unexpected and I wished for a little time to consider of it. He replied, ' Aye, prithee, there is no time for con- sideration; I am going next Monday morning/ "
So on Monday morning go they did, making Lynn their first stopping-place. There Mr. Flynt had a milk punch, the afternoon being By nightfall they reached Rowley,
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whore they were entertained by Reven Jedidiah Jewett. who put them both in one h the only accommodation he had to of Young Sewall was admonished by his tutor stay carefully on his own side, and we hare won! that he did so.
The next day, Tuesday, at old Hampt. they met on the road Parson Cotton, walk on foot with his wife. Mr. Flynt informed h " that he intended to have called and tak dinner with him. hut as he found he was goi from home he would pass on and dine at t puMie house." I'pon which, says Mr. Cott< " We are going dine upon an invitation wi Or. Weeks, one of my parishioners; and (Re Mr. Gookin and his wife of North Hill are lil wise invited to dine there; and I have no don yon « ill lie as welcome as any of us." Win imitation Mr. Flynt accepted, having fi stipulated that Mr. Cotton should hasten and prepare the hostess.
" After dinner, while Mr. Flynt was enjoyi Ins pipe, the wife of Dr. Weeks introduced 1 young child, ahout a month old, and the twi of Parson (ittukin's wife, infants of about t same age. under some expectation of his ble ing lty bestowing something on the mother the twins (as was supposed), although no rne tion of that expectation was made in my he* ing; hut it produced no effect of the kind.'*
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We shall hear more of those Gookin twins. Mr. Flynt, being a bachelor, was regarded as fair game by ambitious mothers.
That afternoon, young Sewall, unfortunately, proved himself not so skilful a driver of a " chair " after all; the old gentleman was thrown out and slightly bruised when their horse stum- bled on a stony road near York. But some court plaster and " two or three single bowls of lemon punch made pretty sweet " served to re- store the equanimity of the travelers and we soon find Bachelor Flynt remarking to his driver, as a young gentleman whom both knew turned into a side road with the girl to whom he was paying court: "Aye, prithee, I do not understand their motions; but the Scripture says ' The way of a man with a maid is very mysterious.* "
At Hampton Falls, on their return journey, the travelers planned to dine with the Reverend Josiah Whipple. " But it so happened the din- ner was over, and Mr. Whipple had gone out to visit a parishioner, but Madam Whipple was at home and very sociable and pleasant and immediately had the table laid, and a loin of roasted veal, that was in a manner whole, placed on it, upon which we made an agreeable meal.
" After dinner Mr. Flynt was accommodated with a pipe; and while enjoying it Mrs. Whipple 1 him thus: ' Mr. Gookin, the worthy
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clergyman of North Hill, has but a small parish, and a small salary, but a considerable family and his wife has lately had twins.*
" ' Aye, that's no fault of mine," says Mr. Flynt.
" ' Very true, sir, but so it is.' And as he was a bachelor and a gentleman of handsome property, she desired he would give her something for Mr. Gookin; and she would be the bearer of it, and faithfully deliver it to him. To which hi plied: ' I don't know that we bachelors are undi an obligation to maintain other folks* children To this she assented; but it was an act charity she now requested for a worthy person, and from him who was a gentleman of opulence; and who, she hoped, would now not neglect be- stowing it. ' Madam, I am from home on a jour- ney, and it is an unreasonable time.' She was very sensible of this; but a gentleman of property did not usually travel without moi money than was necessary to pay the immediate expenses of the journey, and she hoped he could spare something on this occasion. After some pause he took from his pocket a silvi dollar and gave her, saying it was the onl; Whole Dollar he had about him. Upon whit Mrs. Whipple thanked him and engaged sin would faithfully soon deliver it to Mr. Gookin adding it was but a short time to Commencemenl . . . and she hoped this was but an earn<
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of a larger donation. . . . Father Flynt re- plied, ' Insatiable woman, I. am almost sorry I have given you anything.' "
He soon forgot how annoying Mrs. Whipple had been, however, in the pleasure of meeting again the wife of Reverend Nathaniel Rogers of Ipswich, whom he had known at Cambridge as President Leverett's daughter. His greeting to this lady was: " Madam, I must buss you; " and he gave her a hearty kiss. Next morning there was tea and toast for breakfast and when Mrs. Rogers asked how he would have his tea, the witty tutor replied that he liked it strong, " strong of the tea, strong of the sugar, and strong of the cream."
To realize how great an adventure this was in which David Sewall and Tutor Flynt had been engaged, it is necessary to recall that carriages were then almost as novel a means of transporta- tion as air-ships are now. Jonathan Wardell set up the first hackney-coach in Boston in 1712, and in the following year we read of Margaret Sewall, Stephen Sewall's daughter, making a very difficult journey in a calash from " beyond Lyn to Mistick." In 1726 John Lucas of Bos- ton is found advertising the use of a coach and three able horses to take people to any part of the country passable for a coach, at the common price of hackney saddle-horses. This charge - was for the animals; in addition there was a
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fee of twenty-five shillings per week for the driver, the cost of " coach and haroish *' being reckoned " as one horse." " Harnish '* at this time consisted chiefly of ropes and was a some- what uncertain commodity.
Seven years after Tutor Flynt's journey, a " large stage chair " or two-horse curricle began to run from Boston to Portsmouth and back each week. The man in charge of this enter- prise was Benjamin Stavcrs, and his line termi- nated at the Earl of Halifax Inn in Portsmouth, kept by his brother, John Stavers. Ten yean later still, in December, 1771, we find Benjamin Hart advertising that " he has left riding the single horse post between Boston and Ports- mouth and now drives the post stage lately im- proved by John Noble. He sets out from Boston every Friday morning and from Portsmouth on Tuesday morning following."
Systematic staging between Boston and Ports- mouth appears to have begun about 1796, the pioneer on this route being Benjamin Hale of Newburyport, as Seth Paine of Portland was on the lines further east. Robert S. Rantoul, who has written a delightful paper on " Old Modes of Travel in New England ",' sketches in fasci- nating fashion the careers of many old drivers on these stages. Very readably, too, he hints at the experiences they and their passengers
1 Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol. XI, p. 1.
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encountered as, all winter long, in storm or by starlight, they left Boston for the east at five o'clock in the morning:' the smoking corn-cake for breakfast, the chill, crisp morning air, lan- terns flitting eerily through the ample stable, sleepy horse-boys shivering about the door- yard, the sharp crack of the whip, the scramble for places in the dark, the long dull ride before sun-up, and the gradual thawing out of the passengers as the side-lights flickered out and the orb of day prevailed. The first regular stage between Boston and Hartford, and the beginning of systematic communication be- tween Boston and New York, dates from 178S, the impresario of this great enterprise being Captain Levi Pease, an Enfield, Connecticut, man whose home was later in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Pease had a great deal of grit but no money; his friend, Reuben Sykes, who had previously driven a stage with him from Somers to Hartford, — a distance of twenty miles, — supplied the necessary capital for their venture. On October 20, 1783, therefore, at six o'clock in the morning, Pease started from Boston, as did Sykes from Hartford, in " two convenient wagons." Each made the allotted trip in four days, the fare being ten dollars each way. Josiah Quincy has left us a vivid account of a journey in one of their " con-
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" One pair of horses carried the stage eighteen miles. We generally reached our resting-place for the night, if no accident intervened, at ten o'clock and after a frugal supper went to bed with the notice that we should be called at three the next morning, which generally proved to be half past two. Then, whether it snowed or rained, the traveller must rise and make ready by the help of a horn lantern and a farthing candle and proceed on his way over bad roads. . . . Thus we travelled, eighteen miles a stage, sometimes obliged to get out and help the coachman lift the coach out of a quag- mire or rut, and arrived at New York after a week's hard travelling, wondering at the ease as well as the expedition of our journey
It were, however, a pity to progress too rap- idly in our narrative. The stage and the steam- boat came, of course; but full many an interest ing journey on horseback lay between. For in- stance, in the diary of William Gregory, a young Scotchman, who traveled to Boston from New Haven in 1771 to transact some business con- nected with a " general store " which he kept in the latter town, we have a delightfully lively ac- count of the adventures which often befell i personable young man while " on the road.* Wallingford, Hartford, Springfield, and Palmer were early stages of this journey, which took place in the golden days of late September.
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From Palmer our traveler " sett off by seven o'clock rid as fair far as Brookfield and break- fasted and stayed until my two widows one married woman and two young girls came up. Kept alongside of them for fourteen miles, but finding they would only be a bill of costs and no advantage I dropped them. I jogged on the road solitary enough. This is a very mountain- ous country and bad roads. Dined at Spencer, at Whitmore's. After I refreshed my horse in the pasture I pursued my way towards Worces- ter, along with two Scotch-Irishmen, who were glad to hear somebody speak broad. They left me after riding the three miles and I came up with the five women once more at Worces- ter. I put up at one Howard's. The coach proceeded, This is a very handsome place and county town, and court now sits so that the Tavern is quite full. ... I passed for a rela- tive of old Parson MacGregor's of London- derry, New England, which caused a little more respect paid me. I said he was my grand uncle and passed well so. I slept with a man who came to be with me and got up long be- fore me, so that I knew not what he was."
Having paid two shillings tenpence for this accommodation, young Gregory pushed on to Shrewsbury, where he " baited horse and self at the Sign of the Lamb," and then traveled to Marlboro, where he dined at noon; thence
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to Sudbury, where he " oated Dick ", and then " stretched along towards Watertown within ten miles of Boston, and put up at my good friend's house, Ben. Learnard, who is a widower with a fine daughter."
It is interesting to note, in this early account of a " business trip," the traveler's frank de- light in the company of women — so long as they cost him nothing. Often he " spends the evening with several agreeable ladies at a tavern ", but defers his supper-hour until they have gone to bed !
Mr. Gregory's experiences while in Boston are very entertaining. Having secured private lodgings " at one Mr. Coburn's opposite the Bristol Coffee House, which suited me vastly better than a tavern " (being cheaper), he sallies forth and makes the acquaintance of James McMaster, who appears to be in his own line of trade but of whom he soon wearies by reason of the fact that McMaster " brags pro- digiously and tells of the thousands of pounds he sells of goods." Still, McMaster being a Scotchman, the stranger cleaves to him in spite of his boasting. Of September 22 we read:
" This day being Sunday, I proposed going to some place of worship ... I went to the new Boston Church along with J. McMaster and heard Mr. Howard. In the afternoon I went to the New Stone Chapel, and we had
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the sweetest music I ever heard, with a sermon from Revelations. This church is veiy hand- some and well painted and carved in the inside; the outside making no brilliant appearance. Before we went into church we caused our legs to carry us up to Beacon Hill, the highest spot on all the island, where we had a charm- ing view of the town, harbor and shipping, the place taking its name from their making a light here upon any emergency and alarm- ing the country on the approach of danger. . . . After church I proceeded home with J. McMas- ter and drank punch till the going down of the sun, when we sallied forth into the street, and then proposed going to see Captain Service. ... I was introduced to him and began to count kindred, but could not make it out, he nor I knowing but little of relations. . . . Half after nine o'clock I got up and bid good night, but instead of going home I found my- self at the opposite end of the town, two miles from my lodgings. I tacked about and after running through the Lord knows how many crooked streets, I arrived in King street to my great joy. I smoked a pipe, jawed a little and went to bed."
Inexpensive diversion, exactly to the taste of this thrifty young tradesman, was provided a couple of days later by " the ordination of Mr. Bacon and installment of Mr. Hunt, both
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into church. There was a great crowd spectators, estimated to be five hundred. My landlord, Mr. Coburn, introduced me into a pew with twelve ladies, four of whom were married women, the other eight — good God! how can I express it — were such divine crea- tures that instead of attending to the du- ties of the solemnity I was all wonder and ad- miration. I am o'er happy this afternoon, think I am completely paid my trouble and expenses in coming here. ' Don Pedro,* my landlord, said when we came home, 'Gregory, you was as happy dog as any in Boston this afternoon. You had eight of the handsomest ladies all around you as Boston affords and ladies of the first rank, two of which,' added he, ' are the greatest toasts in the place, ■ — Miss Gray and Miss Greenlees, the adorable.' Drank tea at home this afternoon, took a walk with Mr. McMasters, went into a tavern and spent the price of a bowl of punch, came home at nine o'clock. McNaught and I played the violin. We were very merry. Eat my sup- per, smoked my pipe and took myself to the Land of Nod."
Two days later our traveler set out for home; " taking the route out of the south end of the town by Liberty Tree, and then by Old Fort; from that I jogged on to Roxbury. Pass- ing through that town I pursued my way as
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far as Dedham. Then I made a stop and oated Dick. From thence I made my way along and arrived at Walpole just at dark, and I put up at one Mr. Robins', just nineteen and a half miles from Boston, as far as I wanted to ride to divide the way between Boston and Providence. Here was two fine handsome girls."
Mann's, at Wrentham, was the next stop, and there he had breakfast, having journeyed thither early from Walpole. " At a tavern about nine miles from Providence bated Billy and Dick and then proceeded and came to Patuxet, a place where there is a great fall of water and many mills. Here is an excessive high bridge, and not quite finished, which renders it very dangerous to pass. At this place I fell in company with a young lady on horse-back bound on my way, so that I came along the last four miles very merryly. I arrived at Providence half after twelve o'clock noon."
There being talk of a dance in Providence on Monday, young Gregory decides to stay over in that town for a day or two. On Sunday he visits the college, which he pronounces " as handsome a piece of building as any in America", and on Monday at seven in the evening pre- sents himself at " the assembly-room, which is a very handsome one. The ladies and gentle- men drew figures and my figure was No. 2.
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It happened to be the finest lady in the room, which was Miss Polly Bowen, an excellent dancer and an excessive sensible girl, and agree- able with all. We were happy enough this night; broke up the dance at one o'clock, saw my partner home, came home, eat something with some drink and went to bed." On the next day the young fellows who had been at the dance paid visits to the ladies they had met there, but early Wednesday morning Gregory and his fellow-lodgers were aroused with: "Turn out, you lazy dogs. The wind is fair and it is time to be agoing." For now his route was by water to Newport, — a four hours' sail, for which the little company of fifteen prepared by " laying in good stores — roast beef, wine, biscuit, cherry rum gamon &c. Also a bushel of as good oysters as ever I saw we bought for a pistareen." One is not surprised, after reading of these supplies, to learn that friend Gregory was " plaguey sick next morning."
At Westerly, his next lodging-place, our traveler slept " in Mr. Whitefield's bed ", though not very restfully. His host here was a Mr. Thornton, with whom and his wife the Scotch- man piously talked religion. " They told me Mr. Whitefield always stayed at their house when he came that way, that he had con- verted a vast many people thereabouts, and
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that I should sleep in the same bed tonight — they having taken a liking to me by the grave deportment I put on, which in reality was caused by my being tired and worn out. At last sleep catched such a fast hold on me that I fell off my chair on the floor. Then says I, ' I must actually go to bed.' And after bidding a good night with gladness to get off, I slept in Mr. Whitefield's bed as they called it, according to promise but was inter- rupted by son Johnny coming in from a husking frolic. He entered my room and came and drew his hand across my face which awakened me. I immediately bawled out, thinking that old Whitefield had come from New York ' that night to disturb me on account of my pre- tended sanctity with the old folks! "
From Westerly to Stonington the way was so rough that Gregory rested his horse and him- self " walking and riding by spells." Thus he made his way to New London, which he de- scribes as having " a pretty good town house with a very homely old church and meeting house. The latter is situated on top of the hill about half a mile from the town." To the " homely old church " our young friend repaired the next morning and, Presbyterian though he was, " passed very well having all the prayers
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by heart so that I could j
i well i
1 amen i them. Came home, drank toddy and eat a hearty dinner. Then brother Frenchman [a chance companion] and self steered for the meeting house in the afternoon. After a very tedious walk we gained the holy place and were invited into a pew by the door flying open. A young man prayed and preached but how he per- formed I cannot say, for no sooner was I seated than I slept and was in the land of forgetfulness about an hour. . . . When honest Frenchman gave me a jog I was quite surprised to find my- self in meeting, thinking I had been at my lodg- ings all the while."
Actual suffering now befell the sturdy William by reason of the fact that he had no money smaller than a " half Johannes", and in neither " Lime, a small place upon the mouth of the Connecticut River", nor in " Seabrook, on the opposite bank ", could they break so large a coin. Killingsworth, Guilford, and Brandford were his three remaining stops, after making which he arrived once more in his home town, from which he had set forth three weeks before. " New Haven in my eyes makes as good a figure as any," he writes complacently as his journey closes.
Another interesting account of a journey in New England 1 is that of Robert Gilmor, a young
it owned by the Boston Public Library.
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gentleman of Baltimore, who, in 1797, — being then twenty-three, — came north to travel and to' make sketches of places which appealed to him as worthy of preservation in the pages of his diary. The tavern at which Mr. Gilmor put up in New York was the Tontine, " in the coffee room of which the merchants & indeed every body almost assemble at night and noon to hear what is going, and see each other." The route he chose, in making his way to Boston, was by water via Hell Gate and the Sound. Most of the passengers were seasick, but Mr. Gilmor " had a good appetite, ate heartily and could not help smiling to see many turn their languish- ing eyes towards my plate as if they wished to follow my example, and yet the sight seemed to disgust them, making their sickness still more revolting.
" Early in the night," the diary continues, " we got sight of the Lighthouse which stands upon the island of Coanicut, and at 1 o'clock in the morning we landed by moonlight on the wharf at New Port quite rejoiced at our favor- able voyage and glad to have another oppor- tunity to sleep in clean beds."
In a building " over the market-place " at Newport a small theatrical company had for some time been performing, and consequently this visitor from the South was able to enjoy a play that evening. And, at the request of Mrs.
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■
Caton of Baltimore, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Har- wood, who chanced to be in Newport, " took a part and astonished the audience with their great theatrical powers. Cooper played Romeo and Harwood shone in the farce of ' Ways and Means,' in which he played Sir David Dundee.
" The next day we hired a chaise and rode ovi the Beaches & The surf broke very handsomely, and^we stopped to look at the grandeur of the scene. . . . From the beaches we took a circuit round and came into New Port on the other side of the Island. The ride was delightful and lay through the richest and best cultivated country I ever saw. — The fences were made of stone which had been cleared off the land and inter- sected each other so frequently, that when we regarded a hillside from an opposite one, it ap- peared like a richly coloured map.
" Having hired a stage to take us on to Provi- dence, five of us set off early next morning, and got to Providence to dinner; after which we walked over the Town and along the wharves, by which lay many vessels. Tho* this place & Newport are small, there are some of the richest & most extensive merchants in the United States residing in them, particularly Providence. Here lives Mr. John Brown, a man who has ships in all quarters of the globe, who lives like a prince, and contributes to the support of a number of industrious citizens. There are a number of
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elegant houses in Providence, chiefly built of wood and painted in a neat, handsome manner. We left Providence the succeeding morning, and after passing through Patucket, Attleborough, Dedham & Roxbury, arrived at Boston about 4 in the evening.
"The day was charming and when we entered the town it had an elegant appearance. We passed a number of carriages, in which were young ladies going to the country, and we were struck with the Beauty that seemed to prevail in New England. Hardly one lady we saw could be called ugly. ... As my father had recommended me to board with Mrs. Archi- bald * during my stay here (he having been much pleased with her house last year when he & my sister staid there) I directed the driver to set me down there, & luckily a room with 2 beds happened to be unoccupied, when Mr. S. & myself took possession of it. . . . Before dark we had visited the Mall, The Capi- tol, Beacon hill, & almost half the town.
" Boston is a handsome town, filled with some well built houses in general, and some very superb ones, though mostly of wood. The streets are however bad; being narrow, wretchedly paved and no side way of brick for foot passengers; my feet were quite sore with traversing the round
1 Mrs. Archibald kept a select boarding-house in Bowdoin
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. On Friday the 10th 1 hired a ha
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(of which there are a great plenty, and sonn very handsome, both coaches and chariots) and rode to Cambridge, a delightful village about 4 miles from town, to deliver my letter for Mr. Craigie who has a very handsome resi dence there, and was the place which Genei Washington chose for his head quarters, last war, when the army lay in the neighbourhood.
" Cambridge is principally the seat of the University of that name, and of gentlemen' country houses. It is divided from Boston b; a long causeway & bridge of l}4 miles in length which it is extremely tiresome to cross from its length. At night it is lighted up by about BO lamps and looks very brilliant from the Mall.
" At Night we went to the play and were tolerably amused but better pleased with inside of the Theatre ' than anything else, Galleries look very light having no pillars support them, but appear suspended in the air. I think this Theatre much larger & handsomer than the one in Philadelphia. There is another here built of brick in a very superb manner, bi it is a winter one.
" Saturday morning Sherlock & I hired a gig &
made a circuit of about 10 miles into the country.
. . . After dinner . . . we passed over Charles-
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ton [Charlestown] bridge into the little town of that name, visited Bunker's hill and made many grave reflections about the Monument of General Warren erected there. The next day being Sunday, we went to the Protestant Church in this city and heard a sermon which did not come up to my ideas as a good one. We were pleased with the manner in which Dr. Parker read prayers, and were in hopes he would have preached, but we were disappointed by his as- sistant rising in his stead." The church here referred to appears to have been the first Trinity Church, which stood on the corner of Summer and Hawley Streets.
" The weather here," continues the manu- script, " is very uncertain, in the middle of some days the heat is intense, and towards evening it becomes cool enough to change the clothes of the morning; 'Tis now the 14th of August and were I in Baltimore I should call the month November for it is the most unseasonable weather I ever saw. The wind from the North West whistles down the streets, while my dress is no avail against the chilliness of the blast. The people here don't seem to mind it, nor do they, I believe, feel any bad effects from such changes; they call it charming pleasant weather, rise at five in the morning to plunge into the cold bath."
Another visit to the theatre, a dinner at the
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Craigies, and a dinner at Faneuil Hall in hoi of President Adams were the diversions of A Gilmor during the next few days.
" About 306 people sat down to this dim] [at Faneuil Hall] and were not the least crowds The hall was decorated in a very handsome ma ner and enriched by some tapestry of the Gobel manufacture which belonged I believe to the la Duke of Orleans. It was very superb, ai contributed not a little to the elegance of tl scene. The tables were furnished with eve thing that one could wish for the season, wi all kinds of liquors, and a company could n be found better disposed to enjoy the festival.
" The company broke up early and went I the Theatre; where the President also came. ■ A Stage box was fitted up with American fla for his reception & when he entered it Continm peals of applause burst from every quarter the house. He bowed & smiled. During tl performance he seemed very much diverted ai stood a tedious play out very well.
" On Thursday afternoon, Mr. Hay (a fellc boarder) & I took our seats in the Salem Sta; and at Dark arrived at Salem. We had tir to visit several places in this town, particulai the wharves, where wc saw a number of fi vessels. This place carries on an extensi commerce & had lately sent out more East Indi men than all the rest of the United States <
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gether. The principal merchant here, Mr. Derby, has just built a most superb house, more like a palace than the dwelling of an American mer- chant.
" In our way to Salem we passed through a number of pretty little villages one of which, Lynn, is scarcely inhabited by any but shoe- makers.1 This little town supplies even the Southern States with women's shoes for expor- tation. The women work also and we scarcely passed a house where the trade was not carried on. A woman can make four pairs a day & a man has been mentioned to me who could make double that quantity.
" We left Salem about 7 the next morning in the Portsmouth Stage. ... As there was not room for us all, and I did not choose to be left behind I agreed with M. Hay to ride on the coachman's, box with him alternately for 25 miles, when one of the passengers left us. I did not expect to find the seat so agreeable but after a little I preferred it to an inside one. After riding 45 miles through one of the pleasantest countries in the State, we got to Portsmouth in the evening. ... A Mr. Boyd hearing I had come along with M. Hay politely invited me to dine with him on Sunday & to join a party on Saturday evening that were going to Piscataqua
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bridge, which is the only one of the kind in America and a surprizing work. Its length is about 2300 feet, including a small island which it rests upon in the middle of the river. . . . While the company were viewing the work I ran about half a mile to the only place where I could get a tolerable view for a picture. Then seated on a rock I made the sketch at the end of this book, which part I allotted for designs of such objects as struck me during my tour and which could be comprehended in a slight sketch. ... At 4 o'clock on Monday afternoon I got into the Stage and returned to Boston by way of Exeter & Haverhill.
" It is something remarkable that the people of New England in general have adopted a number of words in common conversation & which they interlard their discourse continually, that are not used in the same sense by the other part of America. At Portsmouth in New Hamp- shire particularly I remembered the following. If I observed such a thing was handsome, they would answer quite handsome. If I asked the way or an opinion, the answer always was pre- ceded by I guess, so & so. . . .
" On Friday at 10 o'Clock I ... set out in the stage for New York. We slept the first night at Worcester and got to Hartford on Saturday night after a very disagreeable ride in point of weather. . . . The towns through
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which we have passed in Connecticut are1 in general very pretty; Hartford is among the handsomest as it is the Capital as well as the largest town in the State. New Haven is nearly the same size as Hartford but built in a much handsomer manner. Yale College (the prin- cipal institution of the kind in the State & per- haps in America) is placed in this town.
" On Tuesday about noon we drove into New York and I immediately went to my former lodging, the Tontine Coffee House."
Because this journey belonged chronologically to the late nineties of the eighteenth century, the stage in which Mr. Gilmor traveled was very likely of the type described by Thomas Twining, a young Englishman, who visited the United States in 1795. This was " a long car with four benches. Three of these in the interior held nine passengers. A tenth passenger was seated by the side of the driver on the front bench. A light roof was supported by eight slender pillars four on each side. Three large leather curtains suspended to the roof, one at each side and the third behind, were rolled up or lowered at the pleasure of the passengers. There was no place nor space for luggage, each person being expected to stow his things as he could under his seat or legs. The entrance was in front over the driver's bench. Of course the three passengers on the back seat were obliged to
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crawl across all the other benches to get to their places. There were no backs to the benches to support and relieve us during a rough and fatigu- ing journey over a new and ill-made road."
Not until twenty years later, when the Con- cord coach (so called because it was first built in Concord, New Hampshire) came into use, was there anything like comfort to be had while on the road. Yet the temperament of the trav- eler then as now had, of course, a great deal to do with the amount of enjoyment derived from a journey. Because I have quoted Twining, who had nothing good to say for the stage-coach, it seems only fair to add that John Hellish, who made the journey in 1800 from Boston to New York by mail stage, has left it on record that he derived a good deal of pleasure from the ex- perience. This in spite of the fact that he was called to take his place at two o'clock in the morning!
The social opportunities of stage-coach travel have been appreciatively depicted by many sympathetic writers, — the ruddy, genial driver, who received you into his care with paternal interest, the opportunity which the long drive afforded for friendship, flirtation, and political discussion, and the family histories which be- came known as the stage jolted along the hilly roads. One thing which contributed increas- ingly, as the nineteenth century advanced
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to the pleasure of stage-journeying in New England was that the inns, which in Sarah Knight's day had been wretched, were now almost all of excellent character. Improvement in the means of transportation had made it possible for the landlords to obtain adequate supplies; and the will to serve the public well had long been theirs. For inn-keeping was re- garded as a highly honorable profession.
The excellent landlords at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts, felt themselves to be gentlemen and were. Well might it be written of Lyman Howe, the landlord here in Longfellow's time:
" Proud was he of his name and race, Of old Sir William and Sir Hugh And in the parlor, full in view, His coat-of-arms, well-framed and glazed, Upon the wall in colors blazed; He beareth gules upon his shield, A chevron argent in the field, With three wolves' heads, and for the crest A Wyvern part-per-pale addressed Upon a helmet barr'd; below The scroll reads, ' By the name of Howe.* "
Lyman Howe's pride in his birth and in his profession recalls President Dwight's oft-quoted praise of innkeepers. " Your countrymen [the English] often laugh," writes Dwight, " at the fact that inns in New England are kept by
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persons whose titles indicate them to be men of some consequence. An innkeeper in Great Brit- ain, if I have not been misinformed, has usually no other respectability in the eye of his country- men, beside what he derives from his property, his civil manners, and his exact attention to the wishes of his guests. The fact is otherwise in New England. Our ancestors considered an inn as a place where corruption would naturally arise and might easily spread; as a place where travelers must trust themselves, their horses, baggage and money, where women, as well as men, must at times lodge, might need humane and delicate offices, and might be sub- jected to disagreeable exposures. To provide for safety and comfort and against danger and mischief, in all these cases, they took particular pains in their laws and administrations to pre- vent inns from being kept by vicious, unprinci- pled, worthless men. Every innkeeper in Con- necticut must be recommended by the selectmen and civil authority, constables and grand jurors of the town, in which he resides; and then licensed at the discretion of the court of common pleas. Substantially in the same manner is the business regulated in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In consequence of this sys- tem, men of no small personal respectability have ever kept inns in this country. Here the contempt, with which Englishmen regard this
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subject, is not experienced and is unknown. . . . A great part of the New England innkeepers and their families treat a decent stranger, who behaves civilly to them, in such a manner as to show him plainly that they feel an interest in his happiness; and, if he is sick or unhappy, will cheerfully contribute everything in their power to his relief ."
In illustration of this last assertion, Doctor Dwight cites the experience of the Duke de la Rochefoucault, who was over here in 1795 and was taken ill at the house kept by Captain Williams in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The duke had been greatly agitated when he found himself in this plight among people who had never seen him before. " But fortunately," he writes, " the family in whose house I had stopped were the best people in the world. Both men and women took as much care of me as if I had been their own child. ... I cannot bestow too much praise on their kindness. Be- ing a stranger, utterly unacquainted with them, sick and appearing in the garb of mediocrity bordering on indigence, I possessed not the least claim on their hospitality, but such as their own kindness and humanity could suggest; and yet, during the five days I continued in their house, they neglected their own business to nurse me with the tenderest care and with unwearied solicitude. They heightened still more the
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generosity of their conduct, by making up their account in a manner so extremely reasonable that three times the amount would not have been too much for the trouble I had caused them. May this respectable family ever enjoy the blessings they so well deserve! "
The "occasional journey", it is thus clear, had been robbed of much of its terror during the century which stretched between Sarah Knight's journey and that of this young French nobleman. For nearly a half-century more, too, the inns became constantly better. Then, when they were almost perfect in many ways, they were forced, by the passing of the stage- coach, to close their doors for what looked as if it would be all time. And yet to-day many of the best of them are doing a more thriving business than ever they did! For though the age of the stage-coach has passed, that of the motor-car has come in its place. And journeys in these craft are constant, — instead of ** occa- sional."
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CHAPTER XI
SINGING SCHOOLS AND KINDRED COUNTRY
DIVERSIONS
MOST of the recreations of country life came in winter, when the long evening after an unhurried day afforded ample leisure for a variety of social intercourse. Thus, in addition to quilting parties (for women only) and fishing through the ice (for men only), there were husking-bees and spelling-bees, sleigh rides and skating, all of which offered opportunity for the circulation of flip and roasted apples, mince pies and cider, as well as many other goodies calculated to stir the genial current of the country soul. Balls there were, too, by the middle of the eighteenth century, in many of the old-fashioned taverns. At one of these, given at Red Horse Tavern about 1750, Jerusha Howe, " the belle of Sudbury " and the only daughter of Landlord Adam Howe, served wine and pound cake which she had made with her own hands. For many years the little, pale-blue satin slippers, with satin ribbons plaited around the edges, which Jerusha wore
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on this occasion were preserved in the old hostelry, together with certain pretty gowns which once formed part of the beautiful maid- en's wardrobe. Jerusha had a spinet, too, — the first one owned in Sudbury, — upon which she often made music for her friends and for her father's favored guests.
But not for the singing-school. That came later, for one thing; and, for another, it was a very serious enterprise. The primary purpose of the singing-school was to train the members of the meeting-house choir to a more appreci- ative rendering of the psalms and hymns of worship. But of course love and laughter crept into its solemnities. How could it be other- wise when most of the singers were at the mating age? That Anna Sophia Parkman, for instance, found singing-school a glorious occasion, quite understand as we read in her dia "January 20, 1778: ... go to Singing Sch< at evening, Mr. E. B. here and spent the evening, he is just come home from College." Every day for a week, after that, there is joyous mention of singing-school in the diary, Anna Sophia always being escorted thither by Elijah Brigham, whom she afterwards married.
Nothing of which we read in the annals of New England is quainter than the singii school, held in the country schoolhouse, wii rows of tallow candles planted along the des]
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and a loud-voiced master pitching the tunes. A highly entertaining sketch of the singing- school at Oxford, Massachusetts, has been pre- served for us in the pages of an old magazine.1 Oxford, it seems, did not take its name from the English seat of learning, but rather from its bovine and agricultural interests. And the business of the dairy was wont to be enlivened with psalm tunes.
" But the memorable singing-school of 1880 revolutionized musical matters in Qxfbrd. Be- fore that time, the meeting-house, for instance, had square pews, both on the floor and in the galleries, and a sounding-board over the pulpit, which was always just going to fall on the preacher's head. The minister was a venerable preacher of the old-school orthodoxy. The singers sat in single rows running across three sides of the meeting-house, the treble fronting the bass, and the leading chorister fronting the pulpit. The leading chorister was a tall, bilious, wiry looking person by the name of Peter Bettis. You should have seen him in his glory, especially in the full tide of one of the ' fuguing tunes '; and more especially when they sang, as they very often did, the 122d Psalm, proper metre,
" ' How pleased and blest was I, To hear the people cry.*
1 Monthly Religious Magatine, Vol. XXV,
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On the left of the chorister were the picked young men, the flower of the Oxford farms; on his right the girls, in neat white dresses, all ruddy and smiling as the roses of June.
" Such was the state of affairs when the sing- ing-school opened. A Mr. Solomon Huntington, who had taught singing with immense success in the neighborhood, came to Oxford and, at the Oxford Mansion-house sang and played on his bass-viol. He was a portly, sociable gentle- man, who had seen the world. He had great compass of -voice, and when he played on his violin, and represented a thunder-storm, a con- flagration, the judgment day, the battle of Trafalgar, and several other catastrophes, his hearers were constrained to acknowledge that music had not reached its grand diapason Peter Bettis.
" The singing-school opened in the centre schoolhouse. It was crammed. Peter Bettis was there, with the three vocal sides of his quad- rangle. The elite of the village was there in reserved scats. All the singers in town came thither, bells jingling, boys and girls laughing and frolicking. After the school got fairly launched and organized, Mr. Solomon Hunting- ton had a good many criticisms to make. He told them that half of them swallowed the music down their throats without letting it come out at all. ' Fill your chests and open your mouths.'
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" But now Peter Bettis scarcely moved his lips. On the other hand, the more Peter shut his mouth the more the others opened theirs. I often amused myself later with looking over the school-room during the singing, and among the odd fancies that came into my head, I rep- resented to myself the Oxford singing-school overtaken by some sudden judgment and turned into petrefactions, or, like Lot's wife, into salif ac- tions, some with their mouths wide open, some with their lips screwed together, and I wondered what the geologist would make of it, as he dug them up or quarried them out at some future age, and whether from this single fact he could thread back the history of our singing-school and of its division into the trap-door and the lock- jaw party. What would he make of the pre- served fact? Would he not say that one part was gasping for breath? or would he not say they were trying to eat the others? Would he ever suspect the truth? "
The " truth ", in this instance, was that a deep-seated rivalry had developed between the old faction and the new among the singers. For the interior of the meeting-house had to be entirely rearranged to suit Mr. Huntington; whereupon the conservatives expressed their disgust at the desecration of the old place by bestowing the appellations " hen-roost ", " hay- mow ", and divers other terms suggestive of
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rural tastes and occupations on the new choi gallery. A young blade named Seth Hubba; having been duly chosen leader of the reform party, Peter Bettis never sang any more. After a few Sundays, Seth, stationed in the main aisle directly in front of the minister, led his followers in a fearful and wonderful voluntary. But, the Sunday following that, the good parson, stro- king the top of his head thoughtfully, said, after his sermon had been concluded: "The volun- tary can he omitted. Shall we receive t] Divine blessing? " Subsequently he told soiui one that he thought the voluntary dissipati the solemn impression which he wanted the sermon to leave upon the minds of the people and so felt obliged to leave it out.
" Then and there," concludes our sprightl chronicler, " began ' the Decline and Fall chapters in the history of the Oxford singin, school, — if not of the Oxford parish itself . thus deepening my belief in the superior val of congregational singing."
Another favorite country diversion was spel ing-school. Spelling as a branch of learning h been held in small repute until the publicatii in 1783 of Noah Webster's famous spelling-book, the forerunner of the dictionary issued about a score of years later by this same author. Thi first book was called the " Grammatical tute," and almost immediately after its
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cation spelling became a craze. The pupil who could " spell down the whole school " ranked second only to him who surpassed the rest in arithmetic. Spelling-matches became a common recreation of the winter evenings, the contending parties often coming from a considerable dis- tance to show their firm hold on this elusive art. Spelling bound together more closely the interests of the various members of the family, older brothers and sisters thinking it not be- neath their dignity to stand up and spell with the youngest. Horace Greeley was the leading speller of his community at the tender age of six and frequently, when it became his turn once again, had to be roused from the sleep into which he had dropped. After the spelling at these neighborhood gatherings, came recitations of poetry, together with oratory and dialogues. The dialogues were often cheap and poor, but the oratory was the best America had produced, Patrick Henry's " Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death " winning easily as prime favorite.
A " raising " — erecting the frame of a more or less ambitious house — was also a social occasion. People of every age were wont to share in this festival. And when Jeremiah Story of Hopkinton, New Hampshire, at the age of one hundred, raised the frame of his two- story dwelling-house, the younger people of the neighborhood supplemented the event by a
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party at which they " danced all night till broad daylight " in the temporary home of their host.
The autumnal husking was still another excuse for joviality. Here young people of both sexes shucked the corn-ears, paid forfeits on red ones, and consumed a hearty supper In which baked beans and pumpkin pies played a conspicuous part; dancing to the music of a violin or " fiddle " usually closed the evening. Admiral Bartholomew James of the Royal Navy, during an excursion on the Kennebec River in 1791, attended a husking at Vassalborough, Maine, whose joys he chronicles thus in his entertaining journal: '
" During our stay at this place we saw and partook of the ceremony of husking corn, a kind of ' harvest home ' in England, with the additional amusement of kissing the girls when- ever they met with a red corn-cob, and to which is added dancing, singing and moderate drink- ing."
The " Old Farmer's Almanack " vacillated in its opinion as to the economic value of the husking. In 1805 we find Mr. Thomas writing: " If you make a husking keep an old man be- tween every two boys, else your husking will turn out a losing." Three years later, on the same subject, the dictum is: "In a husking there is some fun and frolick, but on the whi
1 Navy Records Society, 1896, p. 193.
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it hardly pays the way; for they will not husk clean, since many go more for the sport than to do any real good."
Joel Barlow, the Connecticut poet, has given us in his poem on Hasty Pudding a classic passage on husking parties:
" The days grow short; but though the falling
sun To the glad swain proclaims his day's work
done, Night's pleasing shades his various tasks pro- long, And yield new subjects to my various song. For now, the corn-house fill'd, the harvest home. The invited neighbors to the husking come; A frolic scene, where work, and mirth, and play, Unite their charms* to chase the hours away.
Where the huge heap lies centred in the hall, The lamp suspended from the cheerful wall, Brown corn-fed nymphs, and strong hard- handed beaux, Alternate ranged, extend in circling rows, Assume their seats, the solid mass attack; The dry husks rustle, and the corn-cobs crack; The song, the laugh, alternate notes resound, And the sweet cider trips in silence round.
The laws of husking every wight can tell — And sure no laws he ever keeps so well: For each red ear a general kiss he gains, With each smut ear he smuts the luckless
swains; But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast, Red as her lips and taper as her waist,
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She walks the round and culls one favored beau. Who leaps, the luscious tribute to bestow. Various the sport as are the wits and brains Of well-pleased lasses and contending swains Till the vast mound of corn is swept away. And he that gets the last ear wins the day."
Sweet cider was the only drink consumed al Barlow's husking. But Simon Pure huskings provided " Rhum " and whiskey for the enter- tainment of guests, with the result that, in 1828, Mr. Thomas felt impelled to write quite a little homily in dialogue form against what he had now decided to be a pernicious social custom:
" ' Come, wife, let us make a husking,' said Uncle Pettyworth. ' No, no,' replied the pru- dent woman, ' you and the boys will be able to husk out our little heap without the trouble, the waste and expense of a husking frolick. The girls and I will lend a hand, and all together will make it but a short job.' Now, had the foolish man took the advice of his provident wife, how much better would it have turned out for him? But the boys sat in, and the girls sat in, and his own inclinations sat in, and all besetting him at once he was persuaded into the unnecessary measure, and a husking was determined upon. Then one of the boys was soon mounted upon the colt with a jug on each side, pacing off to 'Squire Hookem's store for four gallons of whiskey, others were sent to give the invitations.
I
key. The ions. The
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mother being obliged to yield, with her daughters went about preparing the supper. Great was the gathering at night round the little corn stack. Capt. Husky, old Busky, Tom Bluenose and about twenty good-for-nothing boys began the operations. Red ears and smutty, new rum and slack-jaw was the business of the evening."
Cotton Mather had, some years previously, inveighed with characteristic energy against this form of entertainment, remarking in 1713 that " the Riots that have too often accustomed our Huskings have carried in them fearful In- gratitude and Provocation unto the Glorious God." Mather's spirit may have inspired in Doc- tor Nathaniel Ames this pleasantly satiric pas- sage which I find under date of October 14, 1767:
" Made an husking Entertainm't. Possibly this leafe may last a Century & fall into the hands of some inquisitive Person for whose Entertainm't I will inform him that now there is a Custom amongst us of making an Enter- tainment at husking of Indian Corn whereto all the neighboring Swains are invited and after the Corn is finished they like the Hottentots give three Cheers or huzza's but cannot carry in the husks without a Rhum bottle they feign great Exertion but do nothing till Rhum en- livens them, when all is done in a trice, then after a hearty Meal about 10 at Night they go to their pastimes."
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A kind of first cousin to the husking wi spinning-bee, many descriptions of whicl vivo in the annals of old New England, which occurred on May Day, 1788, at Fair (now Portland), Maine, was thus painstal chronicled in the pages of the local newspi
"On the 1st instant, assembled at the of the Rev. Samuel Deane, of this town, than one hundred of the fair sex, marriet single ladies, most of whom were skilled i important art of spinning. An emulou dustry was never more apparent than it beautiful assembly. The majority of fair I gave motion to not less than sixty wheels. ] were owupied in preparing the material: sides those who attended to the entertain of I he rest — provision for which was ui presented by the guests themselves, or se by other generous promoters of the exhib us were also the materials for the work. the close of the day, Mrs. Deane was presi by the company with two hundred and tl six seven knotted skeins of excellent cottoi linen yarn, the work of the day, excepting t a dozen skeins which some of the com brought in ready spun. Some had spun six many not less than five skeins apiece. takes tiiis opportunity of returning than] each, which the hurry of the day rendered practicable at the time. To conclude,
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crown the day, a numerous band of the best singers attended in the evening, and performed an agreeable variety of excellent pieces in psalmody.
" The price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies. . . . She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." '
One of the heartiest and most characteristic of New England farm festivals was sheep-shear- ing. Nantucket long made an important holi- day of this annual operation, and in an old newspaper I have found the following vivid description of what occurred at these times:
" Sheep-Shearing. — This patriarchal festival was celebrated on Monday and Tuesday last, in this place with more than ordinary interest. For some days previous, the sheep-drivers had been busily employed in collecting from all quarters of the island the dispersed members of the several flocks, and committing them to the great sheepfold, about two miles from town, preparatory to the ceremonies of ablution and devestment. . . . The business of identifying, seizing, and yarding the sheep creates a degree of bustle that adds no small amusement to the general activity of the scene. The whole num- ber of sheep and lambs brought within the great enclosure is said to be 16,000.
1 Cumberland Gazelle, May 8, 1788, as quoted by William Willis, in " Journals of Smith and Deane," Portland, 1849, and by George Lyman Kittredge in "The Old Farmer and Hia^' '
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" As these are the only important holid which the inhabitants of Nantucket have e been accustomed to observe, it is not to marvelled at that all other business should such occasions be suspended; and that labors attendant thereon should be ming with a due share of recreation. According the fancies of the juvenile portion of our cc munity are for a long time prior to the ami June ' Shearing ' occupied in dreams of I and schemes of frolic. With the mind's t they behold the long array of tents, surmouni with motley banners flaunting in the brec and stored with tempting tidbits, Candida for uioney and for mastication. With the min ear they distinguish the spirit-stirring sque of the fiddle, the gruff jangling of the dru the somniferous smorzando of the jew*s-ha and the enlivening scuffle of little feet in helter-skelter jig upon a deal platform. A their visions, unlike those of riper mortals, ; always realized. For be it known, that, ini pendent of the preparations made by pere* actually concerned in the mechanical duties this day, there are erected on a rising ground the vicinity of the sheep-field some twenty p and sail-cloth edifices, furnished with se. and tables and casks and dishes, severally fill with jocund faces, baked pigs, punch and cak and surrounded with divers savory concomitai
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431
in the premises, courteously dispensed by the changeful master of ceremonies, studious of custom and emulous of cash.
" For the accommodation of those merry urchins and youngsters who choose to ' trip it on the light fantastic toe,' a floor is laid at one corner, over which presides some African genius of melody, brandishing a cracked violin, and drawing most moving notes from its agonized intestines, by dint of gripping fingers and right- angled elbows.
" We know of no parallel for this section of the entertainment, other than what the Boston boys were wont to denominate ' Nigger 'Lec- tion * — so called in contradistinction from Ar- tillery Election. At the former anniversary, which is the day on which ' Who is Governor * is officially announced, the blacks and blackees are permitted to perambulate the Mall and Common, to buy gingerbread and beer with the best of folks, and to mingle in the mysteries of pawpaw."
Those whose interest in " Nigger 'Lection " has been piqued by this tantalizing allusion to Boston Common on a day when oysters, gin- gerbread, lobsters, and waffles were displayed on every side, and indulgence in them urged by genial old darkey ladies wearing gay-colored handkerchiefs of the latest Southern style, are referred to the account, in a previous book of
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mine,1 of this peculiarly Boston holiday. Our concern here is with country festivities. And of these none was more characteristic than the quilting-party.
That quilting-party of the song, following which a lovelorn youth " saw Nellie home " through four or five stanzas of mixed metaphor and sentimental twaddle, appears, for poetic purposes, to have taken place in the evening. But the quilting-party of old New England was an afternoon affair and was followed by a tea held at so early an hour that the women saw themselves home without any difficulty. Apart from the tea-drinking, it was a rather serious piece of neighborly cooperation too, — just as a " raising " was for the men. A good deal of preliminary patchwork would have been done before the party; its great function was to fasten the outside covering of the quilt to the lining and its soft layer of cotton wadding. To do tins, the women grouped themselves around a " quiltin' frame," raised at a conve- nient height upon the backs of chairs, and stitched diligently the whole afternoon.
Likewise talked! No gathering in the whoh year compared with the quilting-party as gossip-f est. For because the work demanded no thought on the part of those familiar with the process of quilting, and because the participants 1 " Romantic Days in Old Boston," p. 92.
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were all close together, facing inwards as at a square table, many things which could only be whispered here first found breath. But the crowning joy of every quilting party was the supper afterwards, with its tea, pale in color but really strong, served in the hostess* best china, with bread and butter, hot biscuits, peach" preserves, apple-and-quince sauce, doughnuts, mince pie, custard pie, fruit cake, sponge cake, and mellow sage cheese. Whether the cause be the gossip or the collation, I find my woman- soul yearning, as I write these words, for a revi- val of the quilting-party. Even I, who abomi- nate sewing, would " quilt " for such rewards as these.
In all the country diversions thus far noted, intellectual interest is conspicuous by its absence. That element was first introduced into New Eng- land life by the Lyceum, the earliest example of which was established at Millbury, Massa- chusetts, in 1826. Within five years after that date, nearly every village of any size had its lec- ture course; a very interesting chapter might be written on the history and influence of this new institution. But that would carry us beyond the space and time limitations set for the present volume. It must, however, be observed at this point that the rise of the Lyceum marked the passing of the various " bees," with their concomitants of kisses and cider. It is also
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interesting to record in this connection that the Millbury which boasts the first Lyceum boasts also the first temperance society.
Tradition tells us that the object of this temperance society was to prevent its members from drinking too much! The organization met at the schoolhouse every Saturday evening, and each member then gave an account of his week's indulgence; if, in the opinion of the majority, any had overstepped the bounds of moderation, such were placed upon an allowance for the week to come. One night a member related that he had abstained entirely for the week just passed, but his words were utterly disbelieved; the thing was regarded as im- possible in human experience. And when this same member went on to say that he would never drink again, his good faith was openly challenged; it was believed that he must ta.k«; his dram in secret! But, though this adven- turous soul was subjected to every kind of espionage, he was never again discovered drink- ing liquor. Thus he helped to create an entirely new standard of conduct for country life in England.
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CHAPTER XII
AMUSEMENTS OF THE BIO TOWN
THE sole amusement of the earliest New Englanders was attendance at " meet' ing " and at the Thursday lecture, which provided a slightly diluted repetition of the pleasures of the Sabbath. Then, in the fall of 1634, Boston experienced the excitement offered by Anne Hutchinson's discussions of the sermons which had been preached the previous Sunday. One of these weekly meetings, held in Mrs. Hutchinson's own home on the site afterwards sacred to the Old Comer Bookstore, was designed for men and women, and one was for women exclusively. Both soon became epoch-making. For the talk here was always bright and pithy, the leader's wit o/jick and penetrating and the topic under discussion theology, — the one subject in whicJb ail men and women of that day were deeply interested-
Hawthorne's genius has conjured up the soene at these first Boston " CoDfeRBOM," as we should 'all them to-day. Thus we may share, with the " crowd of hooded women and men m
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steeple hats and close-cropped hair . . bled at the door and open windows of newly built," the thrill of this new opportunity for social intercourse. Well may we believe that " an earnest expression glowed in every face . . . and some pressed inward as if the bread of life were to be dealt forth, and they feared to lose their share."
But the bread of life was too precious a thing, in old New England, to be dispensed by any except the authorized clergy. Hence the speedy banishment of Mrs. Hutchinson. After her day Boston sponsored no more spiritual and intellectual orgies under the leadership of ' laity.
Then it was, very likely, that this big town, for the first time, took to dancing.
The savages themselves were scarcely mon fond of dancing than the colonists who i after them, and though dancing-schools were i first forbidden in New England, and dancing prohibited in Massachusetts taverns and at weddings, we constantly find allusions which show that there was dancing and a good deal of it. There is extant a letter written by John Cotton, in which that good man declares that he does not condemn dancing, " even mixt," as a whole. What he is opposed to, he explains, is " lascivious dancing to wanton ditties with amorous . tures and wanton dalliances," — just the kind
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of dancing to which all decent folk are rightly objecting in our own day.
By the time John Cotton's grandson, Cotton Mather, came to be a power in Boston, the vogue of dancing had so increased that we find Sewall recording:
" the Ministers Come to the Court and com- plain against a Dancing Master who seeks to set up here and hath mixt Dances, and his time of Meeting is Lecture-Day; and 'tis reported he should say that by one Play he could teach more Divinity than Mr. Willard or the Old Testament. Mr. Moodey said 'twas not a time for N. E. to dance. Mr. Mather struck at the Root, speaking against mixt Dances."
The Mather to whom Sewall refers in this last sentence is Increase Mather, who had married John Cotton's only daughter, and the gist of his sermon on " Gynecandrical Dancing or that which is commonly called Mixt or Promiscuous Dancing of Men and Women, be they elder or younger persons together " has come down to us. Characterizing this indul- gence as the great sin of the Daughters of Zion, the preacher exclaimed: " Who were the in- ventors of Petulant Dancings? Learned men have well observed that the Devil was the First Inventor of the impleaded Dances, and the Gentiles who worshipped him the first Practi- tioners of this Art." Then, knowing that
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Miriam and David of the sacrosanct Old Testa- ment would be adduced to controvert his arguments, Mr. Mather continued: "Those Instances are not at all to the Purpose." And since in those days, — Anne Hutchinson having been banished, — nobody talked back to a minis- ter, we find Sewall, a month after the preaching of this sermon, recording, with the tight-lipped terseness of a man who has gained his point: " Mr. Francis Stepney, the Dancing Master, ... is ordered not to keep a Dancing School; if he does will be taken in contempt and be pro- ceeded with accordingly." The two generations of ingrowing Puritanism between John Cotton and his grandson had developed a standard of ethics which approved this kind of treatment for those whom the clergy had black-listed.
Yet, when the royal governors began to have their way, dancing was made very welcome. In 1713 Boston saw a ball at which those of the governor's set danced until three in morning — and, by Revolutionary times, every- body who wanted to was dancing. Even ministers and the Baptists! For "ordination balls" became a recognized feature of welcom- ing a pastor. And when John Brown of Provi- dence moved into his new house, he celebrated the occasion by a dance, the invitations to whi< were printed, after the fashion of the day: the backs of playing-cards.
: 01 the ■ry-
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A fashionable dancing-master of Boston was William Turner, who afterwards resided in Cambridge. Mr. Turner held bis classes at the corner of Tremont and Bromfield Streets and advertised thus in Boston and Salem papers just before the Revolution:
" Mr. Turner informs the Ladies and Gentle- men in Town and Country that he has reduced his price for teaching from Six Dollars Entrance to One Guinea, and from Four Dollars per month to Three. Those ladies and Gentlemen who propose sending their children to be taught will notice no books will be kept as Mr. T. has suffered much from Booking. The pupils must pay monthly if they are desirous the School should continue."
When John Baptist Tioli came to Providence in 1768 and announced a " DANCING SCHOOL . . . where will be taught the Minuet. Double Minuet, Quadrille Minuet, Paspie. Gavotta. Alcuver, Hornpipe, Country Dances Lc of the newest Figures " he was very- well received. His classes were held three days in the week. ladies being taught from nine to twelve a. st- and the hours from five until eizht p. u. beinr " solely devoted to the Instruction of Gentle- men." After one month, however, as the ad- vertisement adroitly points out. " Gentlemen and Ladies will be directed to a* tend together, on every Friday Evening, at which Tune their
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respective Parents inclined to Speculation will have free access." The gentry of Providence appear to have availed themselves liberally and gladly of Mr. Tioli's instructions. When the Italian left the town, after a farewell concert and ball, he expressed in a printed card deep gratitude for the favors that had been shown him. " 'Tis with Reluctance he quits a Place, the Inhabitants of which are justly remarked for their Politeness towards Strangers, among whom he should think himself happy in residing, did not Business urge his immediate Departure." Providence people continued to dance, too, not only in Hacker's Hall on the Towne Street, where many a gay party diverted itself during the next two generations, but at private houses. The "Cotillion Parties" held in Peter S. Minard's Washington Hall, beginning about 1825, carried on the dancing traditions of this town, and from sixty to ninety young ladies and gentlemen attended these gatherings regu- larly. In the biography of Almon D, Hodges, who was one of the managers, we learn that at these festivities " there was dancing, with bu- glers to punctuate the time; and a supper of cakes and pies and wine — as many as seventeen bottles of wine, costing one dollar apiece, were charged in one bill; and there were carriages provided for somebodies, perhaps distinguished guests, at the general expense," Yet the busi-
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ness management was so good that at the end of the season of 1826 there was on hand a sur- plus of eleven dollars and fifty cents, which was presented to the Dorcas Society.
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, also had its organized dancing-parties, held in the beautiful Assembly House, which Mr. Michael Whidden built and owned. The house was of wood — large, long, and painted white. On its lower floor were three great parlors, a kitchen, and an immense hall and staircase. The assembly- room took the whole front of the second story and was about sixty by thirty feet, with large windows and an orchestra over the entrance. Back of it were two dressing-rooms. Chande- liers for wax candles, deep cornices, and richly gilded carving decorated these apartments. Here, from the days of the Revolution until Franklin Hall was built, about 1820, the flower of Portsmouth was wont to assemble. For of this town, widely noted for the elegance of its entertainments and the grace of its social life, these subscription dances were the chief glory; Washington and Lafayette were both glad to be the Assembly's guests of honor on the occasion of their visits to " the old town by the sea."
These assemblies had two managers, we learn, " who, with powdered hair and chapeau under left arm, looked the impersonation of power and dignity. Each lady was taken into
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the ball-room by a manager, and seated. The ladies wore low-necked dresses of silks and satins and velvets. . . . The gentlemen appeared in prescribed costume, which was blue coat with bright buttons, chapeau under arm, knee- breeches, silk stockings, pumps and white kid gloves.
" At the appointed moment the numbers were called for the draw dance, after that the cotil- lions, which were voluntary. A manager led the first dance with the eldest lady or a bride, if one were present; and everything was con- ducted with great state. About ten o'clock, sandwiches of tongue and ham, with thin bis- cuit, were handed round on large waiters, in turn with sangaree, lemonade and chocolate."
Mrs. Ichabod Goodwin, among whose papers were found these paragraphs on dancing at the old Assembly House,1 adds that here, also, the Boston Stock Company gave summer enter- tainments for many years. On these occasions Mr. and Mrs. Duff, Mr. and Mrs. Pelby, and others " played five nights in the week to the elite of the town, at a dollar a ticket." The town had by this time, it is thus made clear, emancipated itself from the narrowness which on June 5, 1762, caused the House of Repre- sentatives in the province of New Hampshire to decree that players be not made welcome to
■Quoted in "The Portsmouth Book."
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Portsmouth, " at least at this time." The reasons behind this prohibition were alleged to be: " Because when such entertainments are a novelty, they have a more peculiar influence on the minds of young people, greatly endanger their morals by giving them a turn for intriguing, amusement and pleasure, even upon the best and most favorable supposition, that nothing contrary to decency and good manners is exhib- ited; yet the strong impressions made by the gallantries, amors and other moving representa- tions, with which the best players abound will dissipate and indispose the minds of youth not used to them, to everything important and serious; and as there is a general complaint of a prevailing turn to pleasure and idleness in most young people among us, which is too well grounded, the entertainments of the stage would inflame that temper. All young countries have much more occasion to encourage a spirit of industry and application to business, than to countenance schemes of amusement and pleas- ure." Those who are interested in the steps leading to this legislation are referred to my book on the theatre.1
In Providence, as in New Hampshire, the
theatre was suppressed at this same time not
from religious or moral scruples, but because
plays and players would have engendered habits
1 " Romance of the American Theatre," p. 33.
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of extravagant spending. From Williamsburg,1 where their efforts had given much pleasure, there came to Rhode Island (in 1762) David Douglass and his associates, armed with a letter of endorsement from Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia. They were so well received at New- port, where they gave " a Benefit Night for the Support of the Poor," that, having secured a letter of introduction to John and Nicholas Brown of Providence, they proceeded to erect a " Histrionic Academy " in the latter city; and there opened, in July, with a representation entitled " Mora Castle taken by Storm.** The acting in this play appears to have been good and the performance enjoyed by those who attended it. But there had been a drought, and the hay-crop was light. The town fathers were not minded to entertain players just then. Hence there was speedily put through " A Act made for suppressing all Kinds of Stage plays or Theatrical Shows within this Colony," — and the obnoxious comedians were summarily warned out of town.
A humorous touch is lent to the accounts of this action by the story that the sheriff, whose duty it was " to proclaim the Act by beat of Drum through the Streets of the Compact part of the Town of Providence ", adroitly managed
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to combine business with pleasure and refrained from announcing the dictum of the Assembly until after he had witnessed the evening's performance. He appears to have sensed the fact that another quarter of a century must elapse before he would again have a chance to enjoy the drama in Providence.
Far more profitable than " stage diversions ", were held to be such an " Entertainment for the Curious " as that described in the Providence Gazette and Country for March, 1764, in which it was shown how one might guard against light- ning in a manner not " inconsistent with any of the Principles of natural or reveal'd Religion "; or that " artful Piece of Statuary . . . worthy to be seen by the Curious " which, at about this same time, set forth " the famous City of Jerusa- lem."
" Sights " rather than theatrical performances flourished in all the big towns of eighteenth- century New England. One of the earliest advertisements which I have found of such " sights " is in the Boston News-Letter of Decem- ber 15, 1726, and announces that " The Lyon that was to be seen at Mrs. Adams's at the South End, Boston, is now Ship'd on Board the Sloop Phoenix, in order to be sent off to the West Indies &c. And He is now to be seen on board said Sloop at the North side of the Long Wharf?, Boston, ... at 6d. each person."
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Another early exhibition is thus chronicled in the Boston Evening Post of Monday, February 29, 1748:
" Whereas the Curious Musical Machine, and the Posture-Boy, at the house of John Williams in King street, are to be shown by the owner but a very little while longer in this Town, those minded to see the same are desired to give speedy attendance: And any Gentleman or others minded to purchase the Living Crea- ture called a Tyger-Lyon (which is still to be seen there) may treat with the Owner at said Place as also for said Machine.
" N. B. Any Gentlemen or Ladies that have a Desire to see the said Machine and Posture- Boy at their Houses may be gratified therein (in the Day-time) by sending for the same, provided there be Company of 12 Persons at least, or Pay equivalent for that Number, at Two Shillings, old Tenor, each." •
On October 8, 1741, " a Concert of Musick " was announced to be given " at Mr. Deblois's Great Room in Wing's Lane " (now Elm Street). " Tickets to be had at the place of performance, at Ten Shillings each. To begin at Six, and end at Three" (sic).
On October 2, 1762, the following announce- ment appeared :
" This evening at a large Room in Brattle street, formerly Green and Walker's store will
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be read an opera called Love in a Village, By a Person who has Read and Sung in most of the great Towns of America. All the Songs will be sung. He personates all the Characters, and enters into the different Humors or Passions as they change from one to another throughout the Opera."
Who the individual was who so deftly accom- modated himself to the Puritanical prejudices of the town as to play all the characters in an opera himself is not known.
Only with great difficulty had the daughters of the Puritans been permitted to enjoy or to study .music. Doctor John Earle declared that the true Puritan woman " suffers not her daugh- ters to learne on the Virginalls, because of their affinity with the Organs." Yet we find Judge Sewall, a Puritan of the Puritans, taking his wife's virginals to be repaired. And soon the spinet and the harpsichord were frequently being purchased by wealthy citizens who were also God-fearing.
To the accompaniment of the " new Clementi with glittering keys " maidens then sang the sentimental ballads of the day with just as much enjoyment and zest as they now sing arias from grand opera while accompanying them- selves on a rich-toned " baby grand." And people generally suffered just as much in con- sequence. John Qumcy Adams, describing in
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his diary for 1788 an evening party at Newbury- port, where he was then reading law, comments in sprightly fashion on the music at such affairs. " After we had sat a little while the infallible request to sing made its appearance. One could not sing, and another could not sing, and a total incapacity to sing was declared all round the room. If upon such occasions everyone would adhere to his first assertion it would be very agreeable, at least to me; for in these mixt companies, when the musical powers are finally exerted, the only recompense for the intolerable tediousness of urging generally is a few very insipid songs, sung in a very insipid manner. But the misfortune is that someone always relents. When we had gone through this ceremony and had grown weary of it, an- other equally stupid succeeded. It was playing pawns: a number of pledges were given all 'round, and kissing was the only condition upon which they were redeem 'd. Ah! what kissing! 'tis a profanation of one of the most endearing demonstrations of Love. . . . Thus we pass'd the heavy hours till about ten o'clock, when we all retired." '
Whether the girl had any musical talent or not, she was taught to play upon an " instrument ", because this accomplishment was supposed to add to her charm for men. Similarly, dancing
1 Massac liuset la Ilisturirnl Smicty Proceedings, 1902.
"
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was encouraged, despite the fierce frowns of the clergy, because it promoted grace and that erect carriage held to be an indispensable attribute of the elegant young woman. It was no less in truth than in jest that Doctor Holmes wrote:
" They braced my aunt against a board
To make her straight and tall, They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small. They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
They screwed it up with pins — Oh, never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins."
Yet this aunt and the other girls of her set had plenty of good times withal. Gaiety and feasting abounded in all the big towns of New England, especially during the period just pre- ceding the Revolution. Rowe's diary pictures for us a sumptuousness of social life unlike any- thing to be found to-day in American towns of ■ less than twenty thousand inhabitants, — Bos- ton's size at that period. And slender as the girls were, they must now and then, at any rate, have eaten as no girl of to-day ever eats. Din- ner was served in the early afternoon and supper in the evening. The quantity of heavy food consumed was astounding. Venison and salmon appear to have been favorite dishes, though we find Rowe recording, on March 20, 1765 : " had
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a fine lamb for dinner; the whole weighed 28 lbs.; this is the first lamb I have tasted this season." Other dishes chronicled with equal ap- preciation are "a fine hind quarter of veal" (February 8, 1776) ; " buffalow stakes which were very tender" (April 9, 1770); partridges, the first of the season (August SO, 1766); and a " pigg which proved tuff " (September 18, 1764). Cherries and strawberries are the only fruits named in the diary and green peas the only vegetables. So, for lack of salads and entrees, Mrs. Rowe and her fair friends must needs have partaken often of partridges, " pigg," and " buffalow stakes."
Also, at times, of turtle. Captain Francis Goelet, a New York merchant-mariner, has left us several piquant pictures of good times in which turtle figured. Under date of October 2, 1750, we find in his journal: ' " Had an invi- tation to day to Go to a Turtle Frolick with a Compy of Gentn and Ladies at Mr. Richard- son's in Cambridge abt 6 Miles from Towne. I accordingly waited on Miss Betty Wendell with a Chaise, who was my Partner, the Companie Consisted of about 20 Couple Gentn and Ladies of the Best Fashion in Boston, viz. the two Miss Phips, Lut Gouoenr Daughters, the Miss Childs, Miss Quiuceys, Miss Wendells &c.
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Dances Several Minuits and Country Dances, and where very Merry about Dusk we all rode Home, and See our Partners safe, and Spent the Evening at Capt. Maglachlins &c."
One of the pleasant little jaunts in which Captain Goelet participated at this time was out to the gracious country home of Mr. Ed- mund Quincey, near which was " a BeautifuII Cannal which is Supply'd by a Brook, which is well Stock with Fine Silver Eels, we Caught a fine Parcell and Carried them Home and had them drest for Supper." Fish loom large the next day, too, when a trip to Marblehead is being described. " This Place is Noted for Children and Noureches the most of any Place for its Bigness in North America, it's Said the Chief Cause is attributed to their feeding on Cods Heads, &c. which is their principall Diett."
Even the Puritan's Thanksgiving was made to yield up joy to this buoyant soul. The entry in the journal for November 1 is: " This Being a General Thanksgiveing day, was Strictly Observed heere and more so by the Presbyte- rians, its Calld their Christmas, and is the Great- est Holyday they have in the Year it is Observed more Strict then Sunday. Went to Meeting with Capt. Wendell and Family where Dyned with a Large Compy Gentn and Ladies and where very Merry had a Good deal Chat and Spent the Evening at Mr. Jacob Wendells with
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a Large Company Sup'd Drank A Number Bumpers and Sung Our Songs &c. till morng." So, even without the theatre, there seems to have been a good deal " doing " in the big town of the eighteenth century. And by the time the nineteenth century had fairly taken pos- session of the stage, play-acting, too, came into its own, as I have elsewhere shown.
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CHAPTER XIII
FUNERALS AS FESTIVALS
JUST as the Puritans gave parties when their children were born, — brewing " groaning beare " and baking " groaning cakes " in preparation for this great event, — so they , made festivals of their funerals. A funeral was counted a much more important function than a wedding, and attendance at funerals began at a very early age. Judge Sewall tells of the at- tendance of his little children at funerals when only five and six years old; little girls were often pall-bearers at the funerals of their child- ish mates.
On these occasions, at least, it would seem as if the customary indulgence in liquor as a solace for grief would have been omitted. But such was not the case. Even as late as the early nineteenth century, according to Lucius Man- lius Sargent, children were not only employed as pall-bearers but conducted themselves just as adults did after the performance of this office.
" Twelve years ago, a clergyman of Newbury- port told me that, when settled in Concord,
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New Hampshire, some years before, he officiated at the funeral of a little boy. The body was borne, as is quite common, in a chaise, and six little nominal pall-bearers, the oldest not thir- teen, walked by the side of the vehicle. Before they left the house, a sort of master of cere- monies took them to the table and mixed a tumbler of gin, water, and sugar for each." *
The Puritans seem to have taken quite literally the exhortation : " Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts." When David Porter, of Hartford, was drowned, in the year 1678, the bill for the expenses of the recovery and burial of his body included liquor for those who dived for him, for those who brought him home, and for the jury of inquest. Eight gallons and three quarts of wine and a barrel of cider were thus consumed. The winding-sheet and coffin used at this funeral cost thirty shillings, but the liquor consumed came to more than twice that sum.
There is no question whatever that the ad- vance of the temperance idea has " done for funerals "; has " done ", at any rate, for funerals as festivals. In the old days invitations to funerals were wont to be sent around as they are at present to balls and parties. Conse- quently funeral processions were often of most imposing length. Sargent recalls one very
> " Dealings with the Dead," p. 13.
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long one which, while going south by the Old South Church in Boston, met another of equal length, going north, and delayed the progress of a third coming down School Street.
Cotton Mather's funeral is thus described in the New England Weekly Journal of February 16, 1728:
" On Monday last, the remains of the late very Reverend and Learned Dr. Cotton Mather, who deceas'd on Tuesday the 18th. Instant to the great loss and sorrow of this Town and Country were very honourably interred. His Reverend Colleague in deep Mourning, with the Brethren of the Church walking in a Body before the Corpse. The Six first Ministers of the Boston lecture supported the Pall. Several Gentle- men of the bereaved Flock took their turns to bare the Coffin. After which followed first the bereaved Relatives in Mourning; then His Honour the Lieut Governour, the Honourable His Majesty's Council, and House of Repre- sentatives; and then a large Train of Ministers, Justices, Merchants, Scholars and other Princi- pal Inhabitants both of Men and Women. The Streets were crowded with People and the Windows fill'd with Sorrowful Spectators all the way to the Burying Place: Where the Corpse was deposited in a Tomb belonging to the worthy Family."
One great expense of every funeral was gloves.
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In some places a pair of gloves was sent as an invitation to relatives and friends and digni- taries, whose presence was desired at the cere- mony; over one thousand pairs of gloves were given away at the funeral of Governor Belcher's wife. Social distinctions were carefully ob- served in the quality of gloves thus employed, and frequently provision concerning this detail was made in a man's will. Thus Samuel Fuller of Plymouth directed, in 1633, that his sister was to mourn his departure in gloves worth twelve shillings, though gloves worth only two shillings sixpence were held to be quite ade- quate for the grief of a certain Rebecca Prime, whom he also named in his will. To the under- bearers who carried the coffin were usually given different and cheaper gloves than those pur- chased for the pall-bearers.
At the funerals of the wealthy, rings also played an important part. These were given to relatives and to persons of prominence in the community with such a degree of lavishness that Sewall, between 1687 and 1725, received no less than fifty-seven mourning rings. When Doctor Samuel Buxton of Salem died, in 1758, at the advanced age of eighty-one, he left to his heirs a quart tankard full of mourning rings which he had received at funerals. Sometimes these rings were quite expensive; those dis- tributed upon the death of Waitstill Winthrop
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were worth over a pound apiece, — and they numbered sixty in all.
In design, mourning rings were usually of gold enamelled in black and bore a death's head, a coffin containing a skeleton, a winged skull, an urn or some other similarly cheering emblem. Trite little mottoes such as " Death parts United Hearts," or " Prepared be to follow me " adorned some of the rings; and in other cases a framed lock of the deceased friend's hair constituted the chief distinction. At the rooms of the Essex Institute in Salem may be seen a collection of mourning rings; this organization has also published a list of all the mourning rings known to be in existence in that old town. For these relics were so greatly prized by the colonists and their immediate descendants as to be carefully bequeathed from one generation to another.
Besides being given gloves and a ring, the parson at these early funerals was usually pre- sented with a scarf of white linen as fine as the family could afford. This scarf was about three yards long and was worn folded over the right shoulder; rosettes of black crape fastened it at this point as well as where the ends crossed under the left arm. After the funeral, the scarf was made into a shirt, which the officiating minister was supposed to wear as a memorial of the deceased.
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Also of fine white linen, though perfectly plain, was the shroud, a garment exactly the same for men and women, and cut long enough to he tied together with a cord below the feet. The coffin itself was lined with white linen, and a curtain of linen, pinked on its lower edge and just long enough to cover the face of the dead, was nailed to its head; this was thrown back when those present at the funeral were " viewing the remains." Everything possible about the house was covered with white linen to heighten the ghostly effect, special attention in this way being given to mirrors and pictures. No outside box was used in the early days, and the handles of the coffin were of rope and " practicable." For some time there were no hearses; in the country districts, where the distance was very long, a farm-wagon was used to transport the coffin. But for as far as a couple of miles it was frequently carried on a bier covered with a black pall. The bearers would then be organized into groups of four and would relieve each other from time to time without breaking step, — having been strength- ened and refreshed for their task by drinking from the bottle which was kept in free circulation.
When people of quality or of high public office died, the funeral was a very impressive function. And, of course, it was then an honor to be invited. Sewall, who hated Governor
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Andros, was yet proud to attend the funeral of the governor's lady, a festival which he de- scribes as follows:
" Friday, Feb. 10, 1687 — Between 4. and 5. I went to the Funeral of Lady Andros, having been invited by the Clark of the South Company. Between 7. and 8 links illuminating the cloudy air. The Corps was carried into the Herse drawn by Six Horses. The Souldiers making a Guard from the Governor's House down the Prison Lane to the South-Meetinghouse, there taken out and carried in at the western dore, and set in the Alley before the pulpit, with Six Mourning Women by it. House made light with Candles and Torches. Was a great noise and clamor to keep people out of the House, that might not rush in too soon. I went home, where about nine aclock I heard the Bells toll again for the Funeral. It seems Mr. Ratcliffs Text was, Cry, all flesh is Grass."
This being a Church of England service, Sewall would not stay for the sermon. But when Governor Bradstreet died and was buried in Salem, the judge journeyed thither with alacrity, staying to the very end of the ceremony and recording that he " bore the Feet of the Corps into the Tomb."
Even on those occasions when there was real grief over the loss of the departed, the attendant ceremonies appear to have gone far towards
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comforting the bereaved. Sewall writes with scarcely concealed unction of the eloquent ad- dress he made at the funeral of his mother, and notes that he " could hardly speak for passion and tears." Yet he records also that he " eat Roost Fowl " at the inn where he put up on his way back to Boston from Newbury. When his second wife died, he tells us that " Govr and Lt Govr had Scarvs and Rings," and then adds that he afterwards " eat a good Dish of Strawberries, part of Sister Stoddard's present." Fifty years later, at the period when John Rowe was Boston's chief diarist, funeral cere- monies were still among the foremost pageants of the town. Those of distinguished public men drew a multitude of spectators. Reverend Doctor Mayhew was buried July 11, 1766, — a day when the thermometer stood at 90 degrees; yet besides a long procession of men and women on foot, there were fifty-seven carriages, of which sixteen were coaches and chariots, following the remains. A number of similarly elaborate funerals are described by Rowe, but the most elaborate of all, and the one with which we may as well conclude these citations, was that ac- companying the burial, September 12, 1767, of Jeremiah Gridley, father of the bar in Boston and master and guide in legal studies of the great John Adams. Gridley had been high in the Councils of the Masons and so was attended
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by one hundred and sixty -one men in full regalia. Besides which there were lawyers in their robes, gentlemen of the town, and a great many coaches, chariots, and chaises, with such a multitude of spectators as Rowe had " never before seen since he had been in New England."
Funerals were recognized, too, in the inevita- ble needlework. Embroideries bearing funeral urns, drooping willows, and the like attained a great vogue towards the end of the eighteenth century, and soon no properly ambitious house- hold was without one. Just as gravestones now are designed with a view to accommodating the entire family roster, so these mourning pieces were prepared in advance, and an empty space left waiting for some one to die. The Tree of Life was a favorite design in these lugu- brious perpetrations.
After the death of Washington, in 1799, each citizen of the United States, by the desire of Congress, wore upon his left arm for thirty days a simple band of crape. Loyal matrons, not to be outdone, provided themselves with mourn- ing cap-ribbons, — black bands on which were stamped in white letters the inscription that had been on Washington's coffin-plate:
"GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Departed this life on the 14th of December.
1799, JR. 68."
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Washington was also mourned in wall-paper! Soon after the death of the Father of His Country, memorial paper in black and gray was placed on many walls throughout the country, and Miss Kate Sanborn, in her charming book on wall-papers, has given us a reproduction of a New England room thus decorated; the design used consisted chiefly of a big bare tomb marked " Sacred to Washington."
In this same book1 1 find the only reference that I have anywhere met to the lugubrious custom of setting aside one room in large houses for a " death room." The Knox house in Thomas- ton, Maine, had such a room over the eastern dining-room. The paper here was dark and gloomy, — white with black figures and a deep mourning frieze; and there was but one window. Benches were ranged stiffly around the sides of the room, and there were drawers filled with the necessities for preparing a body for burial. Here the dead lay until the funeral. And between obsequies the room was always closed up, empty, gruesome — waiting.
When the Reverend Samuel Phillips of An- dover died, in 1771, the parish voted: "that at his funeral the bearers should have rings; that the ordained ministers who attend the funeral shall have gloves; that the ministers who preached gratis in Mr. Phillips' illness,
i " Old-Time Wall-Papers."
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shall have gloves; that the parish will be at the charge of the funeral of the Rev. S. Phillips; and voted — to hear the bearers in their turn."
Popular ministers naturally collected an ap- palling quantity of gloves as the years rolled by. Reverend Andrew Eliot, who in 1742 was ordained pastor of the new North Church in Boston, took it into his head to keep a careful account, in a Nathaniel Ames Almanac, of the various tributes which came to him from funerals, weddings, and christenings, and recorded, also, how many pairs of the gloves were kid, how many lamb's-wool and how many were long or women's gloves, intended for the parson's lady. Being of a thrifty disposition — or perhaps it was because he had eleven children to support — Doctor Eliot eventually tried to turn his trophies into money and, by careful bartering, realized what would amount to about six hundred and forty dollars from the sale of three thousand pairs of gloves accumulated during his long lifetime! His own funeral must have put a great many more pairs into circulation. It occurred " September 15, 1778, when near four hundred couples and thirty-two carriages," Father Gannett writes on the fly-leaf of his almanac, " followed his remains, up Cross Street, through Black Horse Lane, to Corpse Hill."
Since every human experience was " im- proved " by the thrifty moralists of these old
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days, death, of course, had its place with the others. When an aged man, renowned for his many virtues, neared his end, the neighbors, young and old, would come in to see how a Christian could die. With awe they would observe the slow and laborious heaving of the departing one's chest, the vacancy of his fast- dimming eyes, and the spasmodic trembling of his time-worn hands. To us the idea of watching such a spectacle for perhaps hours at a time is'very repugnant; but our pious fore- fathers did not so esteem it. Elaborate de- scriptions of impressive death-bed scenes were printed in many of the old almanacs and Sewall's diary abounded in such. Early advertisements of Romeo and Juliet make much of the fact that the funeral in the play will be given in painstaking and truthful detail!
Yet there was a strong feeling that too great advantage was frequently taken of funerals as an excuse for extravagance. This may be seen from the fact that, at a meeting held in Faneuil Hall, October 28, 1767, with Honorable James Otis as moderator, the following resolu- tion was passed:
" And we further agree strictly to adhere to the late regulations respecting funerals, and will not use any gloves but what are manufactured here, nor procure any new garments, upon such occa- sions, but what shall be absolutely necessary.'
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The reference here is doubtless to recent Massachusetts legislation forbidding the use of wine and rum at funerals. Some curb had obviously become advisable when an ordinary funeral, such as that of Thomas Salter, who died in 1714, occasioned such a bill as the fol- lowing:
£ s d
50 yds of Plush 10
24 yds silk crepe 2
9 S-8 black cloth 11
10 yards fustian 1
Wadding 0
Stay tape and buckram 7
18 yds. shalloon 2
To making ye cloths 4
Fans and girdles 0
Gloves 10
Hatte, shoes, and stockings S
50}^ yds. lutestring 25
Several rings 3
Also buttons, silk cloggs
2 yards of cypress 8 10 0
To 83 gallons of wine @4s. 6d 7 8 6
To 12 ozs. spice @ 18d 0 18 0
To % cwt. sugar @ 7s 0 18 0
To opening ye Tomb
■ To ringing ye Bells
To ye Pauls
Doctor's and nurse's bills 10
— the whole amounting to over £100
16 |
0 |
5 |
0 |
6 |
8 |
6 |
9 |
7 |
6 |
12 |
0 |
17 |
0 |
10 |
0 |
9 |
6 |
15 |
0 |
5 |
0 |
10 |
0 |
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However much people of different wealth and station might vary in the extravagance of their funerals, all, for a long time, received pretty nearly the same kind of recognition on their gravestones. Every third or fourth tablet was inscribed :
" Thou traveller that passest by, As thou art now, so once was I; As I am now, thou soon shall be, Prepare for death and follow me."
Diverting and ingenious epitaphs existed here and there, to be sure, as all of us who frequent old graveyards in New England very well know. Sometimes they were of domestic manufacture, — and sometimes they were not. On the Ben- nington tombstone of the Reverend Jedidiah Dewey, the first pastor in Vermont, may be found the following:
" Let's talk of graves and worms and epitaphs; Make dust our paper, & with rainy eyes, Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth."
Some of my readers will recognize this as an ex- tract from Shakespeare's Richard the Second, and will be the more interested on that account in the Reverend Jedidiah, who differed from most parsons of his time in being an ardent admirer of the Bard of Avon, and who himself ordained that this should be his epitaph.
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In an ancient graveyard in Vernon, Vermont, may be seen one of the many epitaphs written by Reverend Bunker Gay, a famous minister in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, across the river, and a person of quite remarkable talent and wit:
MEMENTO MORI
" Here lies cut down like unripe fruit A son of Mr. Amos Tute, And Mrs. Jemima Tute his Wife CalPd Jonathan of Whose frail Life The days all summ'd (how short the account) Scarcely to fourteen years Amount Born on the Twelfth of May Was He In Seventeen Hundred Sixty Three. To Death he fell a helpless Prey April the Five & Twentieth Day In Seventeen Hundred Seventy Seven Quitting this World we hope for Heaven But tho his Spirit's fled on high His body mould'ring here must lie Behold th' amazing alteration Effected by Inoculation The means improv'd his Life to Save Hurred him headlong to the Grave Full in the Bloom of Youth he fell Alass What human Tongue can tell The Mothers Grief her Anguish Show Or paint the Fathers heavier Woe Who now no nat'ral Offspring has His ample Fortune to possess. To fill his place Stand in his Stead Or bear his Name When he is dead
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So God ordain'd His Ways are Just The Empires crumble into Dust Life and the World Mere Bubbles are Set loose to these for Heaven prepare."
On the Duxbury, Massachusetts, tombstone of Doctor Rufus Hathaway, who died in 1817, is the following, which is really interesting because it fits the busy physician for whom it was written :
" Full many a journey, night and day, I've travelled weary on the way To heal the sick, but now I'm gone A journey never to return."
In a graveyard of Randolph. Massachusetts, is another epitaph worthy of note:
JONA. MANN
Born Dec. 7, 1786, died April 23, 1873.
His truthfulness no one doubted. He was
very poor, consequently
not respected.
Again of autobiographic interest is the fol- lowing over a grave in a cemetery near Boston :
JOSEPH SHELDON
" I was a stout young man As you might see in ten And when I thought of this I took in hand my pen
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And wrote it down so plain That every one might see That I was cut down like A blossom from a tree. The Lord rest my soul."
One of the most touching epitaphs I have ever read is this of a slave:
" God wills us free; man wills us slaves
I will as God wills, Gods will be done
Here lies the body of
JOHN JACK
A native of Africa, who died
March 1773 aged about sixty years.
Though born in a land of slavery he
He was born free
Though he lived in a land of liberty
He lived a slave.
Till by his honest (though stolen) labors
He acquired the cause of slavery
Which gave him freedom
Though not long before
Death, the grand tyrant
' Gave him his final emancipation
And put him on a footing with kings.
Though a slave to vice
He practised those virtues
Without which kings are but slaves."
The excellent qualities of another good slave, who lived and died in Attleboro, Massachusetts, are celebrated thus:
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" Here lies the best of slaves Now turning into dust, Caesar, the Ethiopian claims A place among the just.
" His faithful soul has fled
To realms of heavenly light And by the blood that Jesus shed Is changed from black to white.
Jan. 15 he quitted the stage In the 77th year of his age.
1781."
The last two lines seem by another hand t remind one that even epitaphs are sometu edited — and proofread. Witness the stx which, after setting forth the virtues of M Margaret, etc., wife of, etc., who died, etc., ad " Erratum, for Margaret read Martha."
It was common for many families in old N England to have private burial-places near 1 house; in almost any long ride through t sparsely settled parts of Maine, New Hampshi and Vermont, one may still pass little hoi cemeteries where two or three white stoi shine out among the trees. Funeral processic which ended at these little graveyards woi very likely have been a family party. 0 scarcely wonders that a funeral came to be festival on such occasions. For the mourne as well as the bearers, must then have be
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men and women whose opportunities for social intercourse were exceedingly limited, whose lives were barren of incident, to whom came no daily news, and whose journeys were few and far between. No wonder that they " enjoyed a funeral " — as Sir Walter Scott says his father always did.
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NEVER is the New England country more beautiful than in the golden days of late October, when the ripe corn is stacked high in the meadows, and piles of gleaming yellow pumpkins greet the eye at every turn. Small wonder our forefathers made almost a saint of old Pompion, and chanted joyfully:
" For pottage and puddings and custards and pies
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common sup- plies;
We have pumpkin at morning and pumpkin at noon
If it was not for pumpkin we should be undone."
St. Pompion's Day, as Churchmen, in de- rision, called Thanksgiving Day, was logically the greatest day in the Puritan calendar.
There are those who claim that Thanksgiving Day was the first holiday, chronologically, in the history of New England, even as it remains,
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after a passage of nearly three hundred years, our first holiday aflectionally. If we may believe the record contained in the family Bible of William White, the Pilgrim, — a " Breeches Bible " of 1588, — the first Thanksgiving Day ever observed on this continent was December 20, 1620. In this venerable old volume may be found the following entry: "William White Maried. on ye 3d day of March 1620 to Susannah Tilly. Peregrine Whitee Born on Boared Ye Mayflower. . . . Sonne born to Susanna Whtee December 19th 1620 yt Six oclock morning. Next day we meet for prayer and thanksgiving." Thus New England's most honored of all home festivals is tied up, in narrative history, with a wedding-day and the birth of a first baby. It seems a great pity if we must sacrifice * so poetic and picturesque an origin for the most satisfying of New England festivals!
To be sure, there is no mention here of roast turkey and cranberry sauce, apple, mince, or pumpkin pies. Feasting as a feature of Thanks- giving came in a year later — when the return of seed-time and harvest had made this pleasant indulgence possible. As chronicled in " Mourt's Relation", this celebration was as follows: " Our harvest being gotten in, our Governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might
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after a more speciall manner rioyce together, after we bad gathered the fruit of our labours; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest King Massasoyt, with some ninetie men, whom for three dayes we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Govemour, and upon the Captaine, and others. And although it be not alwayes so plentiful!, as it. was at this time with us, yet by the goodnesse of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie."
This has generally been termed the first autumnal thanksgiving in New England and many have assumed that it inaugurated the thanksgiving occasions of our forebears. But, as a matter of fact, this celebration was a harvest festival, pure and simple, just as the day after Peregrine White's birthday was a day of thanks- giving pure and simple. No religious service is spoken of in connection with the feast at which Massasoit " assisted ", and, save for the prayers before breakfast which, Bradford tells us, were always held at this period, it is not likely that any religious service was observed. The Pil-
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grims did not mi-x sports and religious celebra- tions in the joyous fashion which characterized Church of England folk in Merrie England.
The identification of Harvest Home with the thanksgiving service of the Pilgrims and Puri- tans dates from October 16, 1632. For, that year, there had been a very cold spring, fol- lowed by a hot and extremely dry summer. So passionately desirous were the colonists for rain that they could not refrain from tears as, in their religious assemblies, they called upon God to water their crops. And then came the answer to their prayers: " As they powred out water before the Lord so at that very instant the Lord showred down water on their Gardens and Fields, which with great industry they had planted." ' Wherefore they celebrated God's goodness in a service of Thanksgiving.
Still another picturesque and dramatic thanks- giving of these early days was that occasioned by the arrival, on November 2, 1631, of the ship Lyon, which bore the wife and family of Gov- ernor Winthrop. The military were summoned to arms to do honor to this " first lady of the land ", and for divers days there was feasting, " fat hogs, kids, venison, poultry, geese, and partridges ** being blithely sacrificed to the occasion. Yet this was no more Thanksgiving, as we understand the day, than was that period
i Johnson's " Wonder-Working Provident*," p. 58.
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of games and feasting during the Pilgrims' first golden autumn at Plymouth. Not for some years, indeed, was church thanksgiving bound up with a feast; and it was some years after that before the time chosen for the celebration came to be regularly that of Harvest Home.
The first Thanksgiving proclamation among the Plymouth Colony Records to make mention of the harvest is that of 1068. The words are: " It has pleased God in some comfortable meas- ure to blesse us in the fruites of the earth." November 35 was the day appointed that year; clearly, then, this was a harvest thanksgiving.
In Connecticut the Pilgrims' idea of a harvest thanksgiving became an accepted custom about 1649. W. De Loss Love, Jr., Ph. D-, who has written a very interesting and scholarly book on the " Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England," • declares that the yearly festival, as now appointed by the several states, is un- doubtedly a Connecticut institution. For the practice of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was in due time followed by New Hamp- shire, was to ordain thanksgiving days as result of causes which made their exercise natural. Sewall, as late as 1685, may be found arguing that " 'twas not fit upon meer Generals (as the Mercies of the year) to Comand
1 To which I herebv acknowledge deep indebtedness. The book is published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
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Thanksgiving." None the less, the autumn thanksgiving was usual, even in this colony, after about 1660, though the annual and harvest features of the festival were overshadowed by insistence that greater spiritual blessing must necessarily flow from thanks given for some definite blessing than from any stated observ- ance of a recurring festival.
In the time of the colonial governors there was a great deal of unhappiness in Massachusetts over some of the Thanksgiving proclamations. It had always been the custom to have the proclamation read by the Boston ministers on the two Sundays previous to Thanksgiving Day. Then those who objected to the wording of the proclamation could stay away from meeting — and did. Once, however, Governor Hutchinson fooled them all by persuading Reverend John Bacon, the new- minister of the Old South Church, and Reverend Ebenezer Pemberton, the pastor of the New Brick Church, which the governor himself attended, to read, a week ahead of time, the proclamation of 1771, wherein had been placed an " exceptionable clause." The people at the Old South Church stayed after service that day to talk over the proclamation — and the minister. Those of the New Brick walked out of meeting while the hateful proclamation was being read. They had no mind to thank God for the " continuance of civil and religious
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privileges " at a time when these privileges were being cruelly curtailed. Many of the min- isters would not read the proclamation at all on this occasion, and of those who did some modi- fied it by leaving out this " exceptionable clause ", others by introducing, as did the Reverend Joseph Sumner of Shrewsbury, the words " some of our."
Samuel Sewall, who concerned himself with most things that happened in Boston during his lifetime, was greatly disturbed when the second service on Thanksgiving Day seemed in danger of being crowded out by the social features of the occasion. In 1721 we find him discussing the matter in the Council Chamber at Boston with Colonel Townsend and resenting it bitterly that the latter would not " move a jot towards having two ", though, on this par- ticular occasion, two services were held. Evi- dently the colonel was one of the increasing number of New Englanders who felt that proper justice could not be done to the Thanks- giving dinner when it was crowded in between a morning and an afternoon service. Yet it was not until after the Revolution, " the greatest force of the century for the development of our social life," ' that the recreational side of Thanksgiving Day was given free rein and fire- side games were permitted in the home circle.
1 W. De Lobs Love, Jr., Ph.D.
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Of such a Thanksgiving Day in a New England farmhouse the Quaker poet has said:
" Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East
and from West, From North and from South come the pilgrim
and guest, When the gray-haired New-Englander sees
round his board The old broken links of affection restored, When the care-wearied man seeks his mother
once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl
smiled before, What moistens the lip and what brightens the
eye? What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin
pie? "
Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie was held to be unthinkable. Yet there could be no pumpkin pie without molasses; because Col- chester, Connecticut, did not receive its supply of molasses in season, it voted, in 1705, to put off its Thanksgiving from the first to the second Thursday of November! Pumpkin pies thus featured were usually baked in square tins, having only four corner pieces to each pie!
Second only to the pumpkin pie in importance at such a thanksgiving feast as Whittier sings was the turkey which had been fattened for the occasion and which, when slowly roasted before
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the open fire and painstakingly basted from the dripping pan beneath, was fit to be the lord of any feast. Chicken there was, too, though al- ways in the form of chicken-pie, and vegetables of every sort, with raisins and citron, walnuts and popcorn, apples and cider galore. Surely Sewall could not have really wished joys such as these to be sacrificed to a second service in the meeting-house!
Yet it is only in our own time that Thai giving has taken on more the character of a holiday than of the Sabbath in New England. As late as 1791 we find the law of Connecticut providing:
"That on the Days appointed for public Fasting or Thanksgiving by Proclamation the Governour of this State: all Persons resi- ding within this State, shall abstain from every kind of servile Labour, and Recreation, Works of Necessity and Mercy excepted; and any Person who shall be guilty of a Breach of this Act, being duly convicted thereof, shall be fined in a Sum not exceeding Two Dollars, nor less than One Dollar. Provided this Act shall not be construed to prevent public Posts and Stages from Travelling on said Days."
In this piece of legislation, Thanksgiving, it is observed, is linked up with Fast Day. Until the last century two services were maintained in most New England communities on all days
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appointed for fasting, and until the time of the Revolution, most of the people abstained from food until after the second service; then, as evening drew on, they sat down to a simple repast of cold meat, bread, or " hasty pudding." Fast Day, however, usually came in the spring, just as Thanksgiving Day was an autumn festival, and " one of the first signs of the changing sentiment as to the day," Doctor Love points out, " was the indulgence in visit- ing, walking abroad in the fields, inspection of barns and herds, discussion among neighbors of plans for the planting, much of which the spring season suggested." This was a long way from such days of fasting as Cotton Mather advocated, prayerful periods which had special reference, in most cases, to scourges or afflictions of various kinds. Thus a visitation of canker- worms was responsible for the Massachusetts Fast Day of June 22, 1665, and on November 15, 1649, there was fasting in the Plymouth Colony by reason of an epidemic of " chin- cough & the pockes." An especially solemn fast day in Massachusetts was that of October 80, 1727, a Monday when the Boston churches were crowded all day long by a terrified people whom an earthquake had aroused in the dead of night. Cotton Mather delivered on this occa- sion a sermon called " The Terror of the Lord." During the witchcraft persecutions, Cotton
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Mather spent a large part of his time fasting and preaching and praying. He believed the efficacy of prayer and fasting in curing the afflicted. The climax both of the witchci fasts and of the witchcraft persecutions on January 15, 1696-1097, when Samuel Sewall put up his bill of confession and humbled him- self in public for having done wrong in accepting spectral evidence against the witches. Boston's history contains no finer example of manly self-abasement than this.
I have said that Fast Day usually came in the spring, as Thanksgiving Day usually came in autumn. But this was not invariably the case; hence the final appointment of a Good Friday fast in Connecticut. Good churchman though he was, Washington, in 1795, appointed February 19 to be the national Thanksgiving Day. The date chanced to fall on the second day of Lent, and Connecticut Episcopalians refused to keep the feast; and they refused; also, to observe a fast day which fell in Eastt week. Reverend Samuel Seabury, then tin bishop of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut and Rhode Island, justified the stand he and his people had taken on this matter by pointing out that it was exceedingly disagreeable to Episcopalians " to observe days of Thanks- giving in Lent . . . and equally disagreeabli to be called on to observe days of Fasting
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the season appointed by the church to praise God for the resurrection of Christ and the happy prospects of eternal life opened to us by him." Governor Huntington and Bishop Sea- bury were very good friends, however, and out of desire to avoid the recurrence of a difficult situation, the head of the state allowed Good Friday — the day which particularly recom- mends itself to Episcopalians as a fast day — to be his choice also for a fast. In subsequent years this pacificatory plan was followed by other governors, with the result that in Connecticut Good Friday has, for more than a century now, been a civil holiday as well as a religious festival.
In Massachusetts, whose first annual Fast Day occurred April 19, 1694, Patriots' Day was substituted for the older holiday for the first time on April 19, 1894 — just two hundred years later. For about forty years there had been an agitation against the day, and Gov- ernor Russell in his Fast Day proclamation of the year before (the last ever issued in Massa- chusetts) so strongly urged the abandonment of a day which had " ceased to be devoted gener- ally to the purposes of its origin but is appropri- ated and used as a holiday for purposes at variance with its origin, its name and its solemn character " that the people very properly decided to continue the travesty no longer.
Thanksgiving Day, however, seems to become
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constantly dearer to New Englanders and those of New England origin. Nor does the religious aspect of the day grow less important with the passing of the years. " All is hushed of busi- ness about me," wrote Wendell Phillips on Thanksgiving Day, 1841, to an English friend; " the devout pass the morning at church; those who have wandered to other cities hurry back to worship to-day where their fathers knelt, and gather sons and grandsons, to the littlest prattler, under the roof-tree to — shall I break the picture? — cram as much turkey and plum- pudding as possible; a sort of compromise by Puritan love of good eating for denying itsel that ' wicked papistne ', Christmas."
Christmas was not the only " papistrie against which the Puritan sternly set his face and after all this lapse of time, Sewall's indig- nant blusterings over certain attempts to cele- brate Shrove Tuesday in Boston compel our attention. On this last day before Lent it was formerly the custom to go to confession — to shrive oneself ; after which all sorts of merriment began. Shrovetide in England corresponded to the Italian carnival season and, even after the Reformation had put an end to the confessional practice, the English clung to the habit of festivity. The eating of pancakes or doughnuts, and the sacri6ce of cocks was part of the cere- monial of the season.
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" But hark, I hear the Pancake-bell And fritters make a gallant smell."
But in the nostrils of Cotton Mather this " gallant smell " was nothing but a noisome stench. The eating of pancakes he construed as a relic of Mariolatry and the sacrifice of cocks as rank paganism. In his " Advice from the Watch Tower ", he declares: " It is to be hoped, The Shroves Tuesday Vanities, of making Cakes to the Queen of Heaven, and Sacrificing Cocks to the Pagan Idol Tuisco; and other Super- stitions Condemned in the Reformed Churches; will find few Abetters, in a Countrey declar- ing for our Degree of Reformation. Should such things become usual among us, the great God would soon say with Indignation, How art thou turned Unto the Degenerate Plant of a Strange Vine unto me! "
One of the few English holidays ungrudgingly observed by the Puritans was St. Valentine's Day. From the sixteenth century, in the mother country, the first person of the opposite sex seen on this morning was the observer's valen- tine. We read of Madam Pepys lying in bed for a long time on St. Valentine's Day, with her eyes tightly closed, lest she see one of the painters who were gilding her new mantelpiece, and be forced to have him for her valentine. Id the New World, we find Governor Win-
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throp writing to his wife about " challenging a valentine," and Anna Green Winslow record- ing in her diary (February 14, 1772): "Valen- tine day. My valentine was an old country plow-joger." Which undoubtedly means that the first person little Anna chanced to see that morning was " an old country plow-joger."
Another old-world anniversary, which died very hard, was " Powder -Plot Day," November 5, on which occasion was celebrated the execu- tion of Guy Fawkes, following his treasonable plan (in 1605) to blow up the House of Parlia- ment out of revenge for the edict banishing the priests from England. Judge Sewall refers to one of these celebrations (in 1685) as if it were a regular occurrence:
"Mr. Allin preached, Nov. 5, 1685 — fin- ished his Text 1 Jn. I. 9. mentioned not a word in Prayer or Preaching that I took notice of with respect to Gun-Powder Treason. . . . Al- though it rained hard, yet there was a Bonfire made on the Comon, about 50 attended it. Friday night (November 6) being fair, about two hundred hallowed about a Fire on the Comon."
In the Weekly Journal of November 11, 1735, we find the following account of the anniversary as it was observed that year in Boston :
" On Wednesday last being the 5th of Novem- ber, the Guns were fired at Castle William, in Commemoration of the happy and remarkable
OLD NEW ENGLAND 487
Deliverance of our Nation from Popery and Slavery, by the Discovery of the Gun Powder Plot in the year 1605; and in the Evening there were Bonfires, and other Rejoycings."
The original manner of celebrating this day in New England was to cany in a procession the effigies of the pope and the devil and at the end of the march to burn these symbols, which to the Puritan were alike hateful. But as the eighteenth century advanced, the cele- brations became so boisterous as to cause great anxiety to the authorities. In Boston there were now rival processions, one from the North End and one from the South End and, though each carried images of the pope and the devil as before, these were burned only as the climax of a skirmish between the opposing factions. John Rowe in his diary mentions a fatality which happened to a child as an outcome of the skir- mish in 1764, an accident to which we owe the more seemly celebrations for the years imme- diately ensuing.
As the time of the Revolution approached, images of unpopular officials, like Governor Hutchinson and General Gage, were added on Plot Day to those of the pope and the devil and burned with gusto, as the evening drew to a close. The almanacs made it part of their business to keep the zest for this festival alive by publish- ing, each recurring November 5, such lines as:
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" Gun Powder Plot We ha'n't forgot."
and so well did the tradition of the day endure that Plot Night was being celebrated in Ports- mouth, New Hampshire, as late as 1892! Even at the present time, something of carnival nature is done, on the evening of November fifth, this picturesque old town by the sea, though the boys who blow horns and carry about pumpkin-lanterns have so little knowledge of what they arc commemorating that they call their festival Pork Night!
In most of the large New England towns, as well as in Boston, the observance of this day died very hard- In the diaries of the period may be found many casual references to it. The Reverend Samuel Deane of Portland writes in his journal: " 1770 November 5 Several popes and devils tonight "; " 1771 November 5 No popes nor devils here tonight at my house." The Reverend Ezra Stiles speaks of the custom at Newport in 1771, saying: " Powder Plot, — Pope etc carried about " ; and again on November 5, 1774, he says: "This Afternoon three popes &ct paraded tho* the streets, & in the Evening they were consumed in a Bonfire as usual — among others were Ld. North, Gov. Hutchinson & Gen. Gage." John Adams, attending court at Salem on Wednesday, November 5, 1766, says :
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" Spent the evening at Mr. Pynchon's, with Farnham, Sewall, Sargeant, Col. Saltonstall &ct. very agreeably. Punch, wine, bread and cheese, apples, pipes, tobacco and Popes and bonfires this evening at Salem, and a swarm of tumultuous people attending."
Coffin, in his valuable " History of Newbury ", gives a description of a Plot Day observance which is worth quoting because it is typical of such celebrations in all New England towns at this period, as well as because it marks the passing of the custom:
" The last public celebration of Pope Day occurred in 1775 and went off with a great flourish. In the day time companies of little boys might be seen, in various parts of the town, with their little popes, dressed up in the most grotesque and fantastic manner, which they carried about, some on boards and some on little carriages, for their own and others' amuse- ment. But the great exhibition was reserved for the night, in which young men as well as boys participated. They first constructed a huge vehicle, varying, at times, from twenty to forty feet long, eight or ten wide and five or six high, from the lower to the upper platform, on the front of which they erected a paper lan- tern, capacious enough to hold, in addition to the lights, five or six persons. Behind that, as large as life sat the mimic pope, and several
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other personages, monks, friars and so forth. Last but not least, stood an image of what was designed to be a representation of old Nick himself, furnished with a pair of huge horns, holding in his hand a pitchfork and otherwise accoutred, with all the frightful ugliness that their ingenuity could devise. Their next step, after they had mounted their ponderous vehicle on four wheels, chosen their officers, captain, first and second lieutenant, purser, and so forth, placed a boy under the platform to elevate and move round at proper intervals the movable head of the pope, and attached ropes to the front part of the machine, was, to take up their line of march through the principal streets of the town. Sometimes, in addition to the images of the pope and his company, there might be found, on the same platform, half a dozen dancers, and a fiddler, whose
" ' Hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, Put life and mettle in their heels,'
together with a large crowd, who made up a long procession. Their custom was to call at the principal houses in various parts of the town, ring their bells, cause the pope to elevate his head, and look round upon the audience, and repeat the following lines:
" ' The fifth of November As you well remember,
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Was gunpowder treason and plot;
I know no reason why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.' "
Yet, a very good reason for allowing Pope Day to languish and the treason it celebrated to be " forgot " was found in the fact that the French, who helped us greatly during the Revolution, did not enjoy the reflections upon the Church of Rome and its pope, which were inseparable from the day as thus observed.
Newport, Rhode Island, long cherished one very picturesque custom, which had been brought over from England, — that of watching the sun " rise out of the ocean " on Easter morn- ing. On this anniversary the people of the town crowded the beach to see if the sun would "dance" as it came up; for if it "danced", the year was sure to be a lucky one for those who watched. Accordingly, there was great desire that the orb of day might come up bright and clear. When this had been accomplished, the people on the shore joyously clapped their hands and sang the doxology. Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer, in whose delightful book, " New- port, Our Social Capital," I find a record of this curious old custom, comments that the observ- ance must have been brought from England by the first settlers, who, when they lived in their native land, were wont to " watch for the rising of the Easter sun." Sir John Suckling says: —
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" But oh, she dances in such a way, No sun upon an Easter day Is half so fine a sight."
Trick-playing on April Fool's Day also sur- vived in New England, though Judge Sewall repeatedly inveighs against it. On April I, 1719, he wrote:
" In the morning I dehorted Sam Hirst and Grindell Rawson from playing Idle tricks be- cause 'twas the first of April: They were the greatest fools that did so. N. E. men came hither to avoid anniversary days, the keeping of them such as 25th of Deer. How displeasing must it be to God the giver of our Time to keep anniversary days to play the fool with ourselves and others." Ten years earlier the judge had written to a Boston schoolmaster requesting him to " insinuate into the Scholars the Defiling and Provoking nature of such a Foolish Prac- tice " as playing tricks on April first.
Days which might be " improved *\ either by prayer or by poetizing, were much more to Sewall's taste. He was no kill-joy but be liked to have a substantial and non-papistical reason for dedicating perfectly good time to the pur- suit of pleasure. The birth of a baby — or of a century — impressed him as such a reason. So in honor of the fonner he repeatedly brewed " groaning beer "; and when a chance came to him to celebrate the latter he wrote the fol-
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lowing verses and had a crier recite them through Boston's streets:
" Once more! Our God, vouchsafe to Shine: Tame Thou the Rigour of our Clime. Make haste with thy Impartial Light, And terminate this long dark Night.
" Let the transplanted English Vine Spread further still: still call it Thine: Prune it with Skill : for yield it can More Fruit to Thee the Husbandman.
" Give the poor Indians Eyes to sec The Light of Life: and set them free; That they Religion may profess, Denying all Ungodliness.
" From hard'ned Jews the Vail remove; Let them their Martyr'd Jesus love; And Homage unto Him afford, Because He is their Rightfull Lord.
" So false Religion shall decay, And Darkness fly before bright Day; So Men shall God in Christ adore; And worship Idols vain, no more.
" So Asia with Africa, Europa with America: All Four, in Consort join'd, shall Sing New Songs of Praise to Christ our King."
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CHAPTER XV
CHRISTMAS UNDER THE BAN
THE first Christmas Day in the history of New England is thus described by Governor William Bradford in his famous Log-Book:
" The day called Christmas Day ye Govr cal'd them out to worke (as was used) but ye moste of this new company excused themselves, and saide yt went against their consciences to work on yt Day. So ye Govr tould them that if they made it mater of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed. So he led away ye rest and left them; but when they came home at noon from their work he found them in ye street at play openly, some pitching ye bar, and some at stoolball and such like sports. So he went to them and took away their implements and tould them it was against his conscience that they should play and others work." Most modern writers, quoting Brad- ford on Christmas, stop at this point, the better to bring out that rare thing, a Puritan joke. But to understand the early attitude toward
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Christmas, it is necessary to add two more sentences from the Log-Book. " If they made the keeping of it matter of devotion, let them keep their houses, but ther should be no game- ' ing or revelling in ye streets. Since which time nothing hath been attempted that way, at least oipenly" The italics are mine; they serve, I think, to emphasize the fact that Bradford and his men were not at all averse to the spirit of Christmas, — only to the abuses of the festival as they had known them in England.
Bradford's attitude towards Christmas might be compared to that of Martin Luther. In the case of this and every other relic of " wicked papistrie ", Luther's protest was not against the spirit but the prostitution of that spirit. In which connection it were well for us to recall that one of the most significant and character- istic pictures of Luther represents him sitting, on Christmas Eve, in his family circle, with his wife at his side, and a lighted Christmas tree before him. The Father of the Reformation is playing the lute and, amidst fruit and bread, can be descried, on the table, a huge tankard filled with ale! Not Luther, then, but Calvin, with whom Cotton Mather was wont to sweeten his mouth before going to bed, put Christmas under the ban.
Those who honored Calvin more than they honored Christ were able, being a majority, to
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impose their will upon early New England in the matter of keeping or failing to keep Christ- mas. In 1659 the General Court of Massachu- setts forbade, under a penalty of five shillings for each offense, the observation of " any such day as Christmas or the like, either by for- bearing of labour, feasting, or any other way." Towards the end of the century, however, when the population of the towns had become less homogeneous and the number of Church of England men had greatly increased, this law became so difficult to enforce that in 1681 it was repealed. From this time on, Christmas began to reassert itself, to the immense chagrin of Samuel Sewall, who in his diary chronicles for several successive years that carts come to town on Christmas Day and that the shops are open as usual. " Some, somehow, observe the day, but are vexed, I believe, that the Body of the People profane it; and blessed be God! no Authority yet to compell them to keep it."
The next year the shops and the carts give Sewall great pleasure again, although Governor Andros does go to the Episcopal service with a redcoat on his right and a captain on his left. Eleven years later, in 1697, on the same day: " Joseph tells me that though most of the Boys went to the Church, yet he went not." In 1705 and 1706, to the judge's relief, enter the carts once more on their way to open shops. But
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in 1714 Christmas fell on Saturday, and because of its observance at the church, the judge, on the following day, — the Sabbath, — goes to meeting and sits at the Lord's table with Mr. John Webb, that he may " put respect upon that affronted despised Lord's day. For the Church of England had the Lord's supper yesterday, the last day of the week, but will not have it to-day, the day that the Lord has made." Some New Englanders, it seems, now felt free to observe in their own way " the sea- son wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated." What Sewall quite failed to realize, of course, was that a man might be just as sincere a Chris- tian and just as good a Puritan as he was and still desire to celebrate Christmas. George Wither went to prison for his Puritanism; yet it was Wither who wrote:
" So now is come our joyful'st feast,
Let every man be jolly; Each room with ivy leaves is drest,
And every post with holly. Though some churls at our mirth repine, Round your foreheads garlands twine, Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,
And let us all be merry.
" Now all our neighbors' chimneys smoke, And Christmas blocks are burning; Their ovens they with baked-meats choke, And all their apits are turning.
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Without the door let sorrow lie; And if for cold it hap to die. We'll bury it in Christmas pie, And evermore be merry."
That Sewall was no " churl " but a jolly soul with infinite capacity for social enjoyment we have repeatedly seen; nothing could have appealed to him more than " Christmas pie." But Christmas, in his mind, was bound up with the Established Church; and for the Estab- lished Church he had no manner of use. More- over, and this is the crux of the matter, Christ- mas as a time of boisterous revelry had almost buried, in England, Christmas as the celebration of the Saviour's birth. To sympathize with Sewall and Cotton Mather in their opposition to the introduction of a Yuletide spirit into New England the reader needs to return briefly to a typical Christmas in old England at this period and look in on a roistering crowd cele- brating Christmas Eve in a Fleet Street inn.1
Because it is Christmas lime and high carnival, all sorts of iniquities are now given full rein. Wandering minstrels sing their ribald songs unrebuked; revellers bear in the Yule log, about which they will soon dance with quite as much abandon as did their Saxon ancestors; and on the gambling table in the middle of the room
1 " Fust nud Thanksgiving Daya of New England."
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stands a wassail bowl which will have to be refilled a score of times as the night wears on towards the blessed Christmas morn. In the carols that choristers outside will sing the theme is not praise of Christ the Saviour, but baccha- nalian salutation to Christ the Lord of Misrule:
" The darling of the world is come And fit it is we find a rooine To welcome him. The nobler part Of all the house here is the heart, Which we will give him; and bequeath This hollie and this ivie wreath To do him honour, who's our King, And Lord of all this revelling."
But even this would not have been so bad if, the next day, there had been real reverence for the true meaning of Christmas. Yet right in the midst of the service at a near-by church this sort of thing might happen, according to a chronicler x of the time: " Then marche this heathen company towards the church and churchyard, their pipers piping, drummers thun- dering, their bells jyngling, their hobby horses and other monsters skirmishing amongst the crowd, and in this sort they goe into the church, (though the minister bee at prayer or preaching,) dancing and swinging their handkerchiefs over
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their beads . . . with such a confused noise that no man can hear his own voice. Then the foolish people, they look, they stare, they laugh, they fleer, and mount upon forms and pews to see these goodly pageants solemnized in this sort. Then after this about the church they go again and again, and so forth into the churchyard, where they have commonly their banquetting tables set up."
Most of us think of the Christmas revels of old England as the beautiful thing Washington Irving found them. We do not realize that, at the time New England was settled, the Amen of a Christmas Day Nunc dimitiis: " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, ac- cording to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation," was quite as likely as not to be:
" Yule, yule, yule, Three puddings in a pule Crack nouts and cry yule."
The Plymouth Pilgrims, Church of England folk at heart, went no further in their condemna- tion of Christmas than to- let the day pass without observing it. In Connecticut, on the other hand, there was a law, Peters tells us, forbidding the reading of Common Prayer, keeping Christmas or saints' days, making minced pies, dancing, playing cards, or per-
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forming on any instrument of music* except the drum, trumpet and Jew's-harp. Yet Christ- mas in Connecticut came into its own sooner than in many other parts of New England, owing, very largely, to the influence of Bishop Seabury. " No member of a church household now willingly remained away from the special serv- ice, which, with the Sacrament, gave the day its highest character," writes Mrs. Shelton,1 " and the Christmas-eve service was of interest to many outside the flock. The dressing of evergreens and the windows lighted by rows of candles made an attraction irresistible to the meeting-house children, who were allowed to attend this one church service of the year."
To follow in the diary of John Rowe, the Boston merchant, entries concerning successive Christmasses just before and during the Revo- lution throws considerable light on the change that was taking place, even in Boston, towards this festival. Rowe was an Episcopalian and so wrote:
"Dec. 25, 1764. Christmas Day. Went to Church. Mr Walter read prayers & Mr. Hooper preached from 1st Chap, of the Gospel of St. John & 17th Verse. I was much pleased with the Discourse. A great number of people at Church. Mr. Hooper sent the Box to me to collect for the poor." The records for 1765
1 In " Th« Salt-Box Hmuw."
502
SOCIAL LIFE IN
are lost and on Christmas Day 1766 Mr. Rowe put nothing in his diary. Perhaps the ample home dinner that always followed his attend- ance at church was too much for him. The entry for 1767 is: " Dec. 25. Christmas Day — very cold. I went to church this forenoon. Mr. Walter read prayers & preached a very clever sermon from 2d Chap. St. Luke & 32d verse. I applaud Mr. Walter's Behavior very much." Dec. 25, 1768: "Sunday & Christmas Day — I dined at home with . . ." Again no entry in 1769, while on Christmas Day, 1770, nothing is said about either church or sermon, though mention is made of several people who dined with Mr. Rowe at home and " staid & spent the afternoon & evening & wee were very Cheerfull."
"Dec. 25, 1771. Christmas Day. excessive cold weather, the ink freezing — I went to Church this forenoon. We gathered £318.6/ old tenor which was more than I expected being very Cold & few People at Church.
" Dec. 25, 1772. Christmas Day. Mr. Wal- ter Read Prayers & preached a sensible meta- physical sermon for Christmas from 3rd Chap. Timothy 16th Verse We collected abt four hundred pounds Old Tcndr for the Poor.
" Dec. 25, 1773. Christmas Day. I went to Church this morning. Mr. Walter read prayers & preached a most excellent sermon. We collected
OLD NEW ENGLAND 503
in old tenor 400-8/ for the Benefit of the Poor."
In 1774 no entry of any kind for Christmas Day; in 1775 mention of a "very Good Ser- mon " preached by Mr. Parker while Mr. Wal- ter read prayers. The diary covering Decem- ber is missing for 1776 and 1777, — and the rather depressed entry for Christmas, 1779, is that " the congregation is thin and the day the coldest that had been known for forty years." Mr. Rowe was a Loyalist, and things had not been coming his way of late.
A hospitable attitude towards Christmas was to be noted here and there, even among the party of Dissent, before the strain of the Revo- lution set in. In the journal of Reverend Manasseh Cutler, for instance, I find:
" Dec. 24, 1765 Tuesday, Set out for Boston in the carriage with Miss Polly Balch; very cold. Spent the evening at Capt. Hart's. Lodged at Mr. Williams' It being Christmas eve the bells in Christ Church were rung, chimes played tunes etc. Christ Church is a large brick building, situated at the north end, and is the first church founded in the town.
" Dec. 25, Wed. Christmas. Went to church at King's Chapel, where was a very gay and brilliant assembly. Several intervals, in read- ing service, made for singing anthems, which were performed extremely well. Service was
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SOCIAL LIFE IN
read by Parson Caner, and a sermon preached . . . Then the sacrament was administered (which I did not tarry to see). Dined at Mr. Williams*. A very handsome dinner. In the afternoon service was read, and anthems sung, but no sermon. This church is built of stone, is very beautifully adorned with carved pillars, several images, etc. Here is a very good set of organs but no bells, as the steeple is not erected. This is the most grand church in town, where His Excellency is obliged to at- tend. This evening wc came to Roxbury and ' spent it very agreeably at Mr. Increase Sum- ner's, and lodged at Mr. Samuel Sumner's.
" Dec. 26, Thurs. This morning began to snow. At 10 o'clock we set out for the city of Tiot (Indian name of Dedham), and came to an anchor at Dr. Ames' where we dined, drank tea, and spent a very agreeable txriiing. We came home at 10 o'clock. As it had cleared up, and was a bright moonlight night, and not cold, we had a very pleasant ride. So much for Christmas."
In 1773 we find Doctor Cutler recording " a warm pleasant Christmas ", which he spent attending services in near-by Salem, and on the following day, Sunday, he himself " preached a Christinas sermon! " But after this no more mention of Christmas in the diary until the Revolution had become an old story.
OLD NEW ENGLAND 505
That clever child, Anna Green Winslow, gibes at Christmas in her diary, in the year 1771. On December 24, we find her writing, " To- morrow will be a holiday, so the pope and his associates have ordained." Anna, not being a church child, naturally had no gifts on Christ- mas Day. Not until the nineteenth century had run half its course, indeed, was Christmas celebrated in New England by general merri- ment and the universal exchange of gifts. We find Wendell Phillips, referring gently, as late as 1841, to " that wicked Papistrie, Christmas "; he, like the Presbyterian child in " Poganuc People", had been denied in his boyhood the sweet joys of this great festival. So, of course, had Mrs. Stowe; for which reason she writes with especial sympathy of Dolly, " who did not know what Christmas was, did not know what the chancel was and had never seen anything ' dressed with pine '," Dolly, who slipped out of her warm bed on Christmas Eve and, all by herself, attended a " 'Piscopal " service, — thus precipitating upon the community of which she was a part two powerful -controversial sermons concerning the keeping of Christmas.
To-day, happily, everybody keeps Christmas. Episcopalians and Unitarians, Catholics and Jews, apparently enjoy alike the holly-wreaths and mistletoe boughs, the gathering of kindred, good cheer, merriment, and children's games
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SOCIAL LIFE
for which the day certainly stands on the sur- face, however much of deeper meaning it aiso contains for those who then celebrate the Birthday of Christ.
.
y\
AbhiGmuB. 250\ 3Hft.
Adams. Abigail. £97. 35ft
Adam. Brooks. 13ft.
Adam*. CJuarie* Franca, 199-
286, 473. Adams. John. 113. 135. 13ft. 137.
261. 264. 265. 326. 40S, 4OT.
486. Adams. John Qamrr. 2SS. 325.
336.447. Adams. Mrs. Perm. 296, 297. Adama. Samuel, 105. 33a Adams. Rev. W3tauB. 29a 291. Adams. Rev. ZabdieL 162.
Allen, Ethan, 194, 195. Alien. Job?- 282. Allro. Rev. WQTkm. 106, 106. AJIstoo. Washington. 332. Almanacs, 370-372, 385, 424,
426. Atom, Joseph, 336. Ames, Dr. Nathaniel. 371. Amherst College. 101. Amorv, Mrs. M. B., 323. Amor;-. R. G.. 342- Amorv, Thomas, 230. Amusement*, 417-152. Andover. Mass., ITS, 364, 462. Andre. Mai. John, 329. Andrews, John, 231. Andres, Sir Edmund, 171, 173,
Appleton, Rev. Jesse. 106, 106. Applet on, Samuel, 32. April Fool's Dav. 492. Apthorp, Nathaniel, 230. Ap thorp, Thomas, 230. Attleboro, Mass., 179, 406, 469.
AverS. Asa. 23ft
Bacon. Rrr. Join. 306; 477. Baker. Hofeter. t» 121, 123,
123. 124. Ball, Dr., 125. 136. Bancroft. George. 64- Barfew. Jori. SO. SI. 425, 436- Barnard, Rev Job*. 3*7. "Baj PBftfaft-BM*." 153-157.
Beers. Henrr A, S3.
Bed. Thomas, A.
Befhngham. Gov. Raranid. 311.
212. BcnDingtoB, Vl.. 194. 466. Berkelev. Bamop, 77. 93. 191.
319.353. Berkelev. Maaa.. 191. BrtlK. rMer. 420. 431. 433. BeverlT. Mass.. 105. 367. Bile-readin*. 351. BtDmn, William. 159. Blackburn. Jonathan B-. 373.
321. Blacksmiths, 141. 143 Blaekstooe. William. 339. " Boiled dinner." 260. Bolton, C. K.. 305. Bolton, Mrs. C. K.. vi, 336,
337 310 Books, 59,' 77, 13$. 153, 335,
350-377. Booksellers, 14a Boston, Mass.. 396-399, 405.
406, 407. 408. 455, 503, 504. Bowsloin. Gov. James, 104, 106,
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INDEX
Bowdoin College, 46, 104-109,
321. Bo wen, Daniel, 342. Bo wen, Deacon Ephraim, 266. Bowne. Eliza Bootbgnle, 272. Bo vision, Mrs. Thomas, 322. Uovlsi.ui. Dr. Z;il"!l.-1, ll.i, I '.".». Boylston, Mass., 120. Bradford, Gov. William, 474,
494, 495. Bradslreet, Anne, 356, 363-365. Braii.-I reel , Simon, 363, 459. Braintree, Mass., 135, 199. Branch, Anna Hemjwtciirl, 239. Braille, Thomas, 149. Breck. Rev. Robert, 120. 294. Bre.rk. Samuel, 1*77, 306. Bridge, Horatio, 10S. Brigham, Elijah, 418. Bngham. Dr. Samuel, 120. Brook field, Mass., 120, 395. Brooks, Phillips, 7. Brown, Chadd, 86. Brown, John, 87, 404, 438, 444. Brown, Nicholas, 86, 150, 151,
444. Brown, William Henry, 345. Brown University, 46, 82-92,
128, 229. 267. Browne, Rev. Arthur, 213, 287,
353, 354. Brunswick, Maine, 105. Bryant, William Cullen, 356,
377. Buckingham, Joseph T., 366. Burl, David, 131. Bundling, 196-201. Bunker Hill, 190,329. Burnet, Gov. William, 245. Buxton, Dr. Samuel, 456. Bytes, Dr. Mather, 158.
Campbell, Jacob. 229. Caner, Rev. Henry, 504. Carver, Mass., 251. Cmttanach. Miss H. C 342. Charlestown, Mass., 7. Chase. Salmon P., 97. I'liiiinncv, Charles. 54, 115. Cbccklcv, Rev. John. 353- 356. Checkly, Samuel, 164, 165, 166.
Cheever, Eaekiel, 6, 7. Cheverus. Bishop, 342. Choate, Rufus, 97. Christening customs, 180, 181. Christinas, 484, 494-506. Churches. 145-195. Clarke. .loha, 128. Clarke, Richard. 323. Cleaveland, Parker, 107. Codfish, 261. Coffin, Joshua, 489. Colchester, Conn., 479. Concord, Mass., 20. Concord, N.H.,412,454. Conway, Mass., 334. Cook, Tom. 297, 298. Cooper, Jedidiah, 162. Cooper, Rebecca, 216. CoriW, John Singleton, 213, 272,
310, 321-326. Corwin, Jonathan, 273, 274, 275. Cotton, Rev. John, 5, 436.
Craigie, Andrew, 406. Crevecoeur, Hector Saint-Oean
de. 352. Crowninshield, Edward A., 373,
Cutler, Rev. Timothy, 77, I
Dnguerre, Louis Jacques Mand#.
346, 347. Daguerreotvpes, 336, 346-349. Dancing, 402, 403. 417, 436-
442, Daukers, Jasper, 56. Darling. E., 228. Dartmouth, Earl of, 93. Dartmouth College, 46, 92-97,
105, 130. Davenport, John, 286. Davis, Mrs. D. T., 348. Davis, Horace, 123. Day, Jeremiah, 81. Daye, Stephen, 371. Dr-»ne, Rev. Samuel, 428, 4 Dedham, Mass., 9, 10, II, 12,
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INDEX
500
146, 199, 290, 371, 379, 399,
406, 604. Deerfield, Mass., 44, 143, 192. Delemater, Dr. John, 106. Derby, Mrs. Richard, 333. Dewey, Rev. Jedidiah, 194, 466. Diaries, 288-318. Dickinson, Rebecca, 301, 302,
303. Dighton, Mass., 178. Doolittle, Joel, 110. Dorchester, Mass., 8, 338. Douglass, David, 444. Douglass, Dr. William, 117,
Downit Doyle.
Drinking, 264. ■ Dudley, Gov. Joseph, 58. Dudley, Paul, 63, 294. Dimeter, Rev. Henry, 60, 61,
52, 162. Dunton, John, 209. Durfee, Rev. Calvin, 103. Duxbury, Mass., 468. Dwight, Timothy, 7ft, 80, 81,
95, 109, 110,413,415.
Earie, Alice Morse, vi, 170, 208,
279, 303, 360. Earie, Dr. John, 447. East Greenwich, R. I., 228. Eaton, Rev. Isaac, 83. Eaton, Rev. Nathaniel. 49, 60. Eaton, Gov. Theophilus, 242,
286. Edouart, August*, 343, 344,
346. Edwards, Jonathan, 28, 181,
200, 372, 373. Edwards, Rev. Morgan, 87. Edwards, Rev. Timothy, 183. Eliot, Rev. Andrew, 80, 463. Eliot, John, 6, 12, 13, 152, 271. Eliot, Dr. John, 114. Eliot, John Fleet, 373, 374. Eliot, Samuel A., 64. Ebon, Dr. Louis, 168. Emerson, George B., 64. Emerson, Mary Moody, 311,
352,363.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 312. Endicott, Gov. John, 216, 216. Enfield, Conn., 393. Erring, John, 230. Evans, Elisabeth, 276. Evelyn, John, 215. Everett, Edward, 64. Exeter, N. H., 410.
Faneuil Hall, 408.
Fast Day, 480-484.
Feake, Henry, 320.
Feke, Robert, 320.
Fiske, Rev. Moses, 180.
Fitch. Rev. Ebenezer, 99, 100.
Fitchburg, Mass., 161, 162.
Fleet, Thomas, 373, 374, 375.
Flyut, Rev. Josiah, 387-392.
Forbes, Elisha, 295. ■
Forbes, Mrs. Harrietts M., vi,
125, 292. Forks, 25ft.
Frankland, Sir Harry, 206, 286. Franklin, Benjamin, 140, 141,
371. Franklin, James, 371. Freeman, Rev. James, 301. Fuller, Samuel, 456. FulBom, Glorianna, 206, 207,
Funerals, 463-471.
Gale, Dr. Benjamin, 129. Garfield, James A., 101. Gay, Rev. Bunker, 467. George III, 340. Gilmor, Robert, 402-411. Goelet, Cant. Francis, 450, 451. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 340. Goodrich, Samuel G., 36. Goodwin, Mra. Ichabod, 442. Goodwin, John, 360. Gookin, Parson, 388, 380, 300. Gott, Dr. Benjamin, lift, 120,
121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 293. Gourand, Francois, 347, 348. Gray, Francis Colby, 348. Gregory, William, 394-402. Greeley, Horace, 423. Greenleaf, Stephen, 230.
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510 INDEX |
|
Gridley, Jeremiah, 136, 460, |
Holden, Oliver, 159. 160, 337, |
461. |
33S. |
Griawold, Gov. Matthew, 204, |
Hollis, N. H., 227. |
205. |
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 237, |
Groton, Mass., 179, 199. |
449. |
Grout, Joseph, 296. |
Holyoke, Edward, 00. |
Honyman, Rev. James, 190, 191. |
|
Hadley, Mass., 132. Hale, Benjamin. 392. Hale, Lord Chief Justice, 213. |
Hooper, " King," 283. |
Hooper, Pollv, 230. Hope, Sir John, 331. |
|
Hale, Robert, 351. |
Hopkins. Mark, 100, 101. |
Hallowell, Robert, 230. |
Hopkins, Rev. Samuel. 181, |
Hamilton, Alexander, 330. |
182. |
Hampton, N. H,, 19. Hampton Falls, N. H„ 389. |
Hopkinton, N. H., 202. 227, |
423. |
|
Hancock, Dorothy Quincy, 325. |
Howe, Adam, 417- |
Hancock, John, 101, 325, 330. |
Howe, Jeruslia. 417. |
Harding, Chester, 333, 334. Harris, Benjamin, 23, 24, 26. Harris, William, 356. |
Howe, Lyman, 413. |
Howe, Col. Thomas, 138. |
|
Howe, Sir William, 131. |
|
Harrison, Peter, 189. |
Hughes, Robert Ball. 338. |
Hart, Benjamin, 392. |
Humphreys, David. 80. |
Hartford, Conn., 5, 129, 183, |
Hunter, William, 128. |
279, 393, 410, 411, 454. |
Huntington, Arria S3., 210. |
Harvard, Rev. John, 47, 48, 49. |
Huntington, Gov., 483. |
Harvard, Rev. Thomas, 367. |
Huntington, Solomon, 420, 421. |
Harvard College, 30, 45, 47-73, |
Huntington. Conn., 179. |
152, 154, 350, 387. |
Huskings, 424-428. |
Hatch, Mrs. M. R. P„ 94. |
Hutchinson, Anne, 19, 172, 254, |
Hatfield, Mass., 303. |
435. |
Hathaway, Dr. Rufus, 468. |
Hutchinson, Gov. Thomas, 360, |
Haverhill, Mass., 146, 410. |
477, 487. |
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 107, 108, |
|
186. 272, 435. |
Innkeepers, 137-139, 379-381, |
Hazard, Caroline, 257. |
413-416. |
Hazard, Robert, 256. |
Ipswich, Mass., 7, 22, 119, 137, |
Hazard, Thomas B., 142. |
267, 280, 289. 290. 391. |
II. ./In i , John, 335. |
Irving, Washington, 38, 356 377.500, |
Healy, G. P. A., 336. |
|
Hearaey, Jonathan, 65, 66, 67, |
|
68. |
Jack, John, 469, |
Hempstead, Joshua, 298, 299, |
Jackson, E. Nevill, 340. |
300. |
James, Admiral Bartholomew, |
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, |
424. |
197. |
Jennings, Rev. Isaac. 194. J,-well. K.'v. .h-.tK.liuh, 207. |
Hilton, Martha, 213. |
|
Hingham, Mass., 21, 146, 335. |
Jenett. Rev. Jedidiah, 388. |
Hinsdale. N. H„ 467. |
Jews, 188, 189, 190. |
Hint, Mary, 232. |
" Johnny-cake," 262. |
Hoar, President, 54, 115. |
Johnson, Clifton, vi, 44. |
Hodges, Almon D., 440. |
Johnson, Dr. Samuel. 329. |
INDEX
Major )
1SL
Kmingswarlh, Conn.. 129. 402. Kimball. Genrade Sehryn, 356. King. William. 343. King's Chapel. Samoa, 150,
30L. 367. 503. 504- King's Church, Providence,
R- I. 15a 287. 353. 354. KilUud, resident, 09. Kittredge. George Lrmts, 429. Kneeiand, Mre. AnaUa Eusus,
21a
141.
Lafayette. Gen aV. 441. Laocuut. Uul, 277. I*nf,, Andre*. 375. LavTcooe. An**. 100. Lawton, Frank J-, 337. Lawyer*, 135-137. Lebanon, Conn.. 36. Lechford, ~ 276.
Lester, John, 99.
Liubfidd, Conn., 131.
Lloyd, Dr. James, 131, 132, 304.
305. Longfellow, Henrv Wadsnorth,
107, 213, 338, 344, 413. Longnwadow, Maaa., 192, 193. Lord, Nathan, 105. Love, William De Low, 476, 478. Lovdl, James, 325. Lowell, Jama Ituasdl, 366. Lucas, John, 391. Luther, Martin, 495. Lyme, Conn., 402. Lynn, Maaa., 233, 251. 320, 383,
Lyon,
154.
511
CapC Archibald,
Mime Medic*] School, 106,
107. MaJbone. Edward C, 332, 333,
Mann, Jonathan, 46S. Manning. James, 83, 84, SO, 87. MarMehead, Mass., 60, 367,
451. Marfcorough. Mass., 120, 125,
138, 293, 395. 415. MatahalL Emilv. 335. Masaaaoh. 474.' Mather, Cotton, 28, 45, 53,
115, 117. 145. 150, 153, 179.
188, 202, 208. 271, 319. 356-
363, 356, 375. 427. 437. 43S,
455. 481. 485. 495. 498. Mather. Rev. Increase, 53. 56,
57. 58, 136, 437. 43S. Mather, Richard. 152. Mather, Dr. Samuel, 378, Maude. Daniel. 3. Maxwdl, Rev. Samuel, 7. Mav. Samuel J., 64. Medfurd. Maaa.. 146. Melliah, John. 412. Merrill, John. 355. Middkburv College, 46, 109,
110, 111. Middletown, Conn., 18. Mildmav. Sir Henry, 154. Mfflbury. Maaa., 433. Milk, Rev. Jedidiah, 179. Minard, Peter S., 44a Miniatures. 332. 333, 336. Moffat, Thomas, 128. Moody, Eleaxar, 263, 264. Morrison, Dr. Norman. 129. Mow, Rev. Jedediah, 3a 31. Morse, Richard C, 347. Morse, Samuel P. B., 333. 346.
347.
Mourning rings, 456, 457. Music, 149-lSa 418, 446, 447,
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Nantucket, Mass., 231, 429- |
Pawt.uc-ket, R. I., 399, 405. Peabodv, Andrew P., 69. 70, 71, |
430, 4a 1. |
|
Narragaaselt Pier, 258. |
72. |
Nason. licv. I'.lins. ISA, |
Penee Dale, R. L, 142. |
New Hertford, Mush., 233. |
Peale, James, 332. |
N.'wIhtv, Jol.ii, 374, 375. |
Pease, Ca.pt. Levi, 393. |
Newbury, Mass., 178, 238, 207, |
Pelham, Penelope, 211. |
460, 489. |
Pelham, Peter, 319, 321, 323. |
Newburyporl, 332, 401 , 448, |
Pemberton, Rev. Ebeneaer, 477. |
453. |
I'l-iiii. Juliana. 231. |
" New England Primer," 28- |
Pepperell, William, 232. |
30. |
IVr.v, liar], 132. |
Newfane. Vt., 220. |
Perrault, Charles, 375. |
New Haven, Conn., 5, 7, 15, 74, |
Peters, Rev. Samuel, 73, 186, |
75,280,394,402, 411. |
262, 500. |
New London, Conn., 271, 298, |
Phelps, Hon. Charles, 209, 210, |
299, 401, 402. |
211. |
Newport, R. I., 5. 85, 127, 129, |
I'liihi.i.-Ipliia, 123. |
188. 189, 190, 191, 320, 400, |
Phillip*. U.v. Smiiuel, 462. |
403, 404. 491 |
Phillip*, Wendell, ;">U, 484. 505. |
Niepee, Joseph Nin'-phore. 346, |
Physicians, 114-135. |
347. |
Pier, Arthur Stan wood, 61. |
Noble, John. 392. |
Pierre, Prank liu. 107. 108. |
Northampton, Mass., 16, 132. |
Pierpont, Rev. John, 113, 345. |
Northborough, Mass.t 125. |
PfttaOdd, Mas*., 102. |
Norwich, Conn.. 270. 344. |
I'lviuiiiilli, Mass., 20, 145, 177. |
Nourae, Rebecca, 273. |
251.291, 456,481,500. |
Porter, David, 464. |
|
Oakes, President, 54. |
Portland, Maine, 104, 107, 392, |
Occom. Samson, 93. |
428. 488. |
Old Baptist. Church, Providence, |
Portsmouth, N. H., 238, 343, |
R. I., 88, 89. |
354, 387, 392, 409, 410, 441, |
•• Old Shfe." Hiugham, Mass , |
442, 443. 488. |
146. |
Pi.tt.-r. Col. Ni.l.i.lss. 236. |
Old Snulli M.^-tint? House. 146, |
Prime, W. C, 220. |
175. 176, 239, 455. 459, 477. |
Printers. 139. 140. |
Olnev, Richard, 385. |
Providence, R. I., 85, 87. 150. |
Ordination balls, 183, 438. |
151, 235. 236, 266, 287, 353, |
Otis, Mrs. Harrison Gray, 336. |
355, 356, 384-386, 399, 400, |
Otis, James, 136,464. |
404, 405, 439, 440, 443-445. |
Oxford, Mass., 419-422. |
" Pudding time." 261. |
Pumpkins, 258. 261, 262, 382, |
|
Paine, Seth, 392. |
472, 473, 479. |
Palfrey, John O., 113. |
Punishments, 186, 187. |
Palmer, Mass., 395. |
Pyburg, Mrs., 341. |
Parker. Eliza W-, 228. |
|
Parker, Rev. Samuel, 407, 503. |
Quiliinif-jmrt-ies, 432, 433. Quincey, Edmund, 451. |
Parlunan, Anna Sophia, 418. |
|
Park man. Rev. Ebenexer, 292- |
Quincy, Josiah, 393. |
298. |
Quiucy, Mrs. Marv Miller. 339. |
Parmont, Philemon, 3, 6. |
Quincy, Maas., 286. |
INDEX
Reynolds, £ Ridgefield, C
lUflcw, Robert, 188. Randolph, Man., 468.
Rantoul, Robert 8., 392. Ratcliffe, Rev. Robert, 4S9. Rauschner, John Christian, 337. Raweon, Edward, 213. Rawson, Sir Edward, 213. Rawson, Rebecca, 213, 214. Revere, Paul, 133.
" ' i, Sir Joshua, 330. d, Conn., 36. Riding mares, 257, 383. Riedeael, Baron, 264. Robinson, John, 329. Rochefoucault, Duke de la,
415. Rogers, Rev. Nathaniel, 391. Rogers, William, 84. Howe, John, 230, 449, 450, 460,
461, 501, 502, 503. Rowley, Mass., 267, 387. Roxbury, Mass., 6. Royal], Mrs. Anne, 386, 387. Rumsey, Thomas, 214. Ruskiu, John, 340. Russell, Eliia, 229. Russell, Gov. William, 483. Rust, Henry, 137
Sailors, 142, 143.
Salem, Mass., 15, 273, 408, 409,
456, 457, 459, 489, 504. Salisbury, Stephen, 64-69, 312-
" Salt^Box House," 32, 34, 243,
289, 378, 501. Salter, Thomas, 466. Saltonstall, Gov., 76. Sanborn, Kate, 462. Sargent, Lucius Manlius, 453,
454. Sargent, Peter, 208, 209. Saybrook, Conn., 72, 73, 74,
402. Scarborough, Maine, 272. Schools, 1-45. Scituate. Mass., 52. Scotland, Conn., 168. Seabury. Bishop, 482, 483. Sedgwick, Theodore, 99. Servants, 276-283.
Bewail, David, 387, 388, 389, 391.
Bewail, Judith, 243.
Sewall, Judge Samuel, 7, 51, 55. 56, 57, 58. 13b. 166, UB, 167. 168, 171, 174. 178. 180, 208, 209, 226, 232, 243, 249, ail, 286, 289. 290, 319, 356, 437, 447, 453, 456, 458, 459, 460, 476. 478. 486, 492, 496.
Sewall, Stephen, 391.
Shakespeare. 350, 466.
Sheep-shearings, 429-431.
Shelburne, N. H-, 35.
Sheldon, George, 143.
Shelton. Jane Dp Forest, vi, 32, 243, 376, 601-
Sherman, Rev. John, 179.
Shirley, Mass., 337.
Shoemakers, 142.
Shrewsbury, Mass., 393, 478.
Shrimpton, Henry, 243.
Silhouette, Etienne de, 339.
Silhouettes, 339-346.
Singing-Schools, 40, 418-422.
Slicer, Adeline E. H., 164.
Sluyter, Peter, 66.
Smibert, John, 272, 319, 320.
Smith, Dr. Nathan, 106.
" Southworth and Hawes," 349.
Sparks, .Tared, 113.
Spence, John Russell, 230.
Spencer, Gov. John, 239.
Spencer, Mass., 395.
Springfield, Mass., 181, 193.
SUndish, Lora, 35.
Stavers, Benjamin, 392.
Stavere, John, 392.
Stepney, Francis, 488.
Sterling, Sir John, 206, 207.
Sterling, Mass., 369.
Stiles, Rev. Ezra, 141, 151, 178,
488. Stiles, Dr. H. R., 200. Stonington, Conn., 401 Stratford, Conn., 206. Stratford-on-Avon, 48. Storer, Mrs. Ebeneser, 309, 310. Story, Jeremiah, 423. Story, Judge, 62.
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514
Stoughton, Chief Justice, 136. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 506. St. Valentine'* Day, 486, 486. Stuart, Gilbert, 272, 326, 327,
328, 32S, 334. Sudbury, Mass., 396, 413, 417. Sumner, Clement, 134. Sumner, Rev. Joseph, 478. Sumner, Mary Osgood, 310. Sunderland, Mass., 44.
i, 206, 286.
INDEX
Sumage, Ames, 206 Sweatland, William,
273.
tnd, V Sykes, Reuben, i
Table-manners. 263, 264, 382. Talleyrand, 328. Taunton, Mass., 184, 186. Taverns, 161, 162. Taylor. George, 287. Tea-dnnking, 251-256. Teatts, Mrs. Hannah, 269,
270. Temperance societies.. 434. Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 366. Thanksgiving, 451, 472-484. Theatres, 403, 406, 408, 442,
443, 444. 445. 452, 464. Thomas. Isaiah, 156, 159, 376. Thomas, Robert Bailev, 134,
135. 140. 369, 370, 424. Thomas (on, Maine, 462. Thorndikc, Mrs. Mary Quincy,
339. Thornton, John, 94. Ticknor, George, 69. Tioli, John Baptist, 439, 440. Tisdale, Nathan, 36. Tobacco, 184, 185. Touro, Rev. Isaac, 189. Touro. Judah, 190. Trinity Church, Boston, 407. Trumbull, John, 36, 80, 324,
329-332, 333. Trumbull, Governor Jonathan,
141. TwininR. Thomas, 411. Tudor. Dr. Elihu. 129. 130. Tudor, Deacon John, 288, 300,
Tyler, Dr. Moses Colt, 358, 365,
371. Tyler, Royall, 197.
Upton, Jacob, 162.
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 24. Vanhornrigh, Hester, 92. Vane. Sir Harry, 60. Van Rensselaer, Mrs. John Kins.
491. Vassalborough, Maine, 424. Vergoose, Elisabeth, 374. Vernon, Vt„ 467. Vyall, John, 161.
Wadsworth, Benjamin, 59, 60.
Walker, Jaraea, 113.
Wallis, Dr. Samuel, 119.
Walpole, Horace, 337.
Walpole. Mass., 399.
Walsh, Robert, 346.
Walter, Rev. William, 230, 501,
502, 503. Wansey, Henry, 135. Ward, Hannah, 220. Wardell, Jonathan, 391. Warren, Mercy. 356. Warren, R. I., 84. Washburn, Emory, 101. 102,
103. Washington. George. 24, 326.
327, 406, 441, 461. 462. Waters, Henrv F.. 48. Waterston, R. C. 5. Watertown. Mass., 179. 396. Wax portraits, 336-339. Webster, Daniel. 96, 97, 335,
336. Webster, Noah, 33, 422. Wedding rings, 202. Weeden, William B., 143, 250. Weimar, 340. Weld, Rev. Abijah, 179. Wells, Dr. John D,, 106. Wendell. Jacob, 451- Wenham, Mass.. 119. Went.worth, Gov. Benning. 213. Wentn-orth, Sir John, 94. 95. West, Benjamin, 327, 329, 330. Westborough, Mass., 292-298.
INDEX
Wenterir. R.
;W
Weapon, Unas-, 234.
Wb»Ulev, Pbilha. 279- Wheelock, EfenaeT, 82, 93, 94,
95. 96. 97. WheriodL.Jcfan.9S. Whed ■ J ifclit, Rev. John. 276. Whidden, MiehaeL 441. Whipple, Bex. Jonah. 389. White, Peregrine. 473. Whit*. Susanna. 20S. White. Rev. Tbom**. 35tt Whitendd, Rev. George. GO,
251, 400, 401. Whitmore. William H., 374. Whittier, John GtvenleaJ, 215,
479.
373.
Wilkins, Comfort, 209. Willard, Capt. Aaron. 278. Willard, Samuel, 57, 58. Willard, Sidney, 63. Williams, Capt., 415- Williams, Eleaxar, 193. Williams, Ephraim, 98. Williams, Eunice, 192. Williams, Roger, 82, 86, 128,
185, 287. Williams, Rev. Stephen, 192,
193.
WtEEama Cn&ege, 46. «7-l«t. WflBon. Rev. Join, 271. Windsor, Coon-, 139, ISO. 301,
231. Window. Anna Green, 1S3. 180,
231. 303, 304. 305, 306, 307.
30S, 309. 310. 486, 505. Window. Edward. 20P. Winthrop, Gov. John, 4, 17, 216.
217, 218, 339. 340. 341. 330.
475- Winthrop, Wait, 371, 456. Winthrop, Maine, 18S. Witchcraft, 358-361. Wither, George. 497. Woburn, Mass., 5, 30, 21, 32. Woloott, Dr. Alexander, 139.
isa
WcJcott, Henrv, 129. Wolcott, Gov. Roger. 129. 204, Woleott. Ursula, 204, 205, Woodbridge. William, 18, Worcester, Mass., 120, 39S, 410. Worth, Henrv B., 333. Wrantham, Mass.. 399, Wright, Patience Lovell, 337. Wynter, John, 380.
Yale, Elihu, 75.
Yale Collage. 18, 46, 73-82, 134,
330, 411. York, Maine, 146, 320, 389.
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